The bigger they are, The Harder they fall
by TheSkullyWriter
Summary: "There are multiple cells out there, fighting for a better future" - Mon Mothma. This story takes place around the same time Rebels does. We follow a separate rebellion cell known as the Freedom Ringers as they struggle to outmaneuver the Empire's finest Grand Admiral: Thrawn, and his protégé Riser Mack. This is all the while they try to supply resources to form a larger rebellion.
1. Chapter 1

**So I thought I needed to say this before anyone starts saying, "This isn't Canon at all!" I know it isn't. I thought I would take my own stance from another side of the Rebellion since it's indicated in Star Wars: Rebels, by Mon Mothma that there were multiple rebel cells across the galaxy. I will try my best to not be breaking any initial and set in stone lore as best as I can but merely adding a fun, non-canon story to the mix. So without further or do. I introduce to you: The Bigger they are, The harder they fall Chapter 1 **

_Destruction. Destruction was all that radiated around the scorched planet now. Once a small rebel cell base had been now turned into ashes by Thrawn's personal, favorite agent to send on theses types of missions. He always got results in one way or another and had no remorse for how he achieved it. He had been sent to the planet known as Felucia to destroy a reported Rebel cell on the flora planet. _

As the two individuals stood on the scorched ground that was the planet of Felucia, there stood the red Twi'lek Jedi Knight and an Imperial faces makeuped with dirt and scum as blaster fire danced across the burning inferno and spaceships dragged across the greeny atmosphere that is Felucia. As the two looked at eachother, not making a move and watching the other one.

The red Twi'lek had red spots that were darker than the general colour of red that shaded her that somewhat resemble almost Tribal marks but were just the coloration of her skin. Her gleaming and bright purple eyes peered into the agent's bluerer eye colour. Her leathery jedi robe that hung onto her slim but fit form with a royal blue shirt in the center that parted that initial black leathery vest. She also was dressed in a black leathery skirt with a royal blue aspect that made the outfit look like one piece. Holding it up was a bejewelled brown belt with a sapphire as its jewel. To end off her outfit was black leather combat boots that were messily laced into knots to keep them in place.

Now the agent wasn't your typically agent. He wore a black leather imperial branded jacket with a grey imperial officer's outfit underneath it. On his shoulders were black metallic-like shoulder pads that hung to his shoulders fittingly. His clearly younger face had ice-cold blue eyes peered into hers and with a devilish smile. For his almost pitch black hair, he preferred a comb over style and stood at about 187 cm ( 6'2 ) while his enemy stood at about 177 cm ( 5'10 ). This really brought out his pale white skin that was cleared scarred from all the wars he had endured. He also wore black imperial boots that would finish up the outfit and made him look all the more intimidating.

"So when are you pesky rebels just going to stop this pointless rebellion and come quietly," the Imperial agent unsheathing vibrosword and picking his words, "or am I going to have to put a stop it it myself?" He clearly had a strong and booming voice that had a slight tint of an accent ( British ) and commanded attention.

The Twi'lek watched his actions carefully and cautiously. This man was known as Grand Admiral Thrawn's protege and he certainly was proving it so far: Ruthless, Manipulative, and Unorthodox, he got results and they were sure of it.

"If you think we are going to stop fighting for the freedom and liberty of the people Riser," Unsheathing her lightsaber and igniting it in one swift motion and continuing with, "then let me just be the first to say that I would rather die here on this scorched planet than ever come 'quietly' to. you!" With her voice being more masculine but also feminine and had a typical defiant attitude that dressed her voice.

The white saber glowing and hummed with excitement and the two once again initiated into a staring contest before the Twi'lek took the first initiative by force jumping into the air and then propelling herself forcefully at Riser, attacking with her lightsaber in an overhead downwards strike at him. Riser quickly repelled the attack by bring up his vibrosword in a sideways position before clenching his fists and grounding himself in antipactication as the saber soon connected with his sword and caused him to slide back a bit but not falter in his stance. The Twi'lek quickly went onto the offensive by delivering strikes and caused Riser to stay on the defensive for awhile. They continued for awhile until it ended off with the Twi'lek making a mistake by striking with an overhead motion while flowing through it to the sides which left her right guard open for Riser to duck then easily follow through with a right handed punch to her gut. The Twi'lek stumbled back a bit as for she was completely surprised by this attack but following after with Riser's vibrosword cutting deep into her dominant arm which instinctively made her drop her saber and recoil in pain as warm blood pooled in the wound, slid down her left arm and dripping off her elbow. She clutched her shoulder as she faced him with a face masked by courage and steadhardiness but was secretly, very much afraid. It was the first time she had been bested by someone who was not a force wielder.

She was as soon as she took into the situation and knew she had to retreat, was surprised by Riser again. He sidekicked her into the stomach and then proceeded to slash down, connecting with bone and muscle as it connected with her right hand. She felt her right hand no longer clutching at her left shoulder and quickly realized that it was completely gone now. She screamed in agony and pain as blood quickly poured out of where her right hand should be. The Twi'lek immediately collapsed to her knees onto the muddy ground as she cried tears of agony as blood continuously poured out from her missing right hand.

Seconds that felt like an entirety passed her as he drew closer to her and held his vibrosword at that nook of her neck now.

"So what was that Twi'lek? You rather die here on this decimated planet than in a Imperial prison," he chuckled awhile before continuing, "Well, so be it Jedi or should I call you by your actual full-name and title: Tania Windwalker, Jedi Knight of the now deceased Jedi Order."

Tania spat in his face and proceeded to pant, "Yea that's what I said, didn't I? Or is all this fighting rushing to your head and destroying your brainwash programming?"

She grinned at him with courage because she wouldn't let him get the last laugh by having her be scared.

* * *

Although her death wouldn't be at his hands today, well probably not today. As he brought his vibrosword up and was about to proceed to decapitate her, a black and silvery VCX-100 light freighter passed overhead and near the two combatants. Laser fire blasted at the two as jumped back quickly to avoid the deadly lasers.

It landed quickly near Tania and as the entrance ramp to the ship dropped, a bronze Trandoshan with one knee on the floor with his IQA-11 Blaster Sniper Rifle and took potshots at the Imperial agent. He was dressed in his old bounty hunter's apparel, which resembled a black shirt with medium-long sleeves and had a white tactical over-vest that had terminal detonators attached to them and an extra pistol. He also had the same colored cargo pants that cuffed at his ankles with his old but strong trandoshan left foot pointing towards the two combatants and his right foot angled back with the palm facing the back. Age riddled his red eyes and face as he had one eye closed and the other right up to the scope of sniper.

"Hurry up Ringer 3! We have been waiting for you to be done with thisssssss Imperial sssssscum," hissed the old Trandoshan. He quickly realized her state and shouted, "Code Black! Ringer 1, we got a Code Black!"

The man said to be Ringer 1 came out the ship and saw Tania's physical state. He was dressed in black overtunic and brown undertunic but didn't have the typically jedi outer robes but had a noticeable robotic looking right hand that glowed orange. Although with his brown undertunic had a hood that concealed his face as he planted his feet onto the muddy and scorched ground of Felucia. The man was clearing human but something about his stance and walk held a certain type of respect and wisdom with each step. He drew his lightsaber that glowed a bright yellowish orange colour and took Tania's left hand and helped her up to her feet and protected her as she walked in pain towards the ramp of the black freighter. He would deflected with ease the stray blaster fire that would across his path, continued until Tania finally made it to a safe point inside the ship and the ramp closed and lifted off.

"Hailey! We need you now!" the voice that came from the man was much older and grizzled like a war veteran. He drew back his hood and it revealed a bald caucasian head with golden eyes and wrinkles that had seen numerous wars.

A smaller human appeared at the top of the loading bay of the ship. She was dressed in a huge royal looking white and blue outer robe that hid a black and bluish purple leathery, form fitting outfit. Although something was different in this human that in that her eyes were covered with a bandage that didn't seem to be covering a scar or wound but as if she was blind. Her short brown hair was revealed when she withdrew her outer hood back to get a better 'view' of the situation. She looked down at Tania and took a second to realize that she was in immense pain. She quickly made haste down the ladder with her dark blue boots with metallic laces clanging the ladder steps and her bo-rifle rattling on back, as she, on the second step, jumped and made her way towards Tania. Her hands glowed a friendly bright green as the force enveloped around Tania's bleeding shoulder and in no time, did the bleeding come to a stop and then proceeded to work on her stump where her right hand should be.

"Isslarok, inform Ulysses we need to get the hell out of here, now!" The old jedi informed the old Trandoshan. The Trandoshan nodded his head before quickly escalating the ladder as best as an old Trandoshan can and making his way through the freighter. When he reached the cockpit of the freighter, he leaned over the pilot's seat, where an Ugnaught sat, piloting the ship.

"Ulyssssesssss, Karusssss ssssaid hurry up!" Isslarok hissed.

"I am trying my best but these wannabe clones are tough to evade especially with all the AT-ST blaster fire" snorted Ulysses.

"Well your besssst isssss not getting ussssss anywhere right now and unlessssss we want to be ssssshot down, then try harder dammit!" Isslarok hissed.

"Maybe if you *snort snort* stop dragging your ssssssss's I could concentrate!"

Isslarok looked at the old and bald Ugnaught with annoyance and rolled his eyes because he didn't have time for the humanoid pig's snide remark at his command. He made his way to the center of the ship which was a small area with Pazaak table in a corner and a trash compactor in front of it a few meters away. He found the ladder up to the modified top turret that allowed for there to be twin gunners. He found a HK-77 assassin droid manning the top guns.

"Master, I have been killing the meatbags with an efficiency rating of 87.89% and plan to push that to a 100% efficiency rating before we leave this mud pit."

"Good job Heat! At leassst I know I can count on you." said Isslarok before climbing back down, opening the hatch directly under the suspended ladder leading to the top guns, finding himself in the underbelly turret gun and quickly asserting himself into position and firing at hostiles.

As the ship took off into orbit, Riser look as the freighter known as the Black Pearl, sored into deep space and that's when the rebel A-wing fighters took their retreat, following the freighter to ensure its safety. The agent sheathed his vibrosword and picked up the hand that was once attached to Tania and inspected it before shaking his head as he sighed.

He pulled out his imperial communicator and contacted Thrawn. The following conversation ensued.

"Thrawn, I am unfortunate to deliver the news that the Rebel cell known as the Freedom Ringers has escaped."

The blue chiss humanoid being sighed with annoyance as he spoke, "Head Agent Riser Mack, You already know that I don't accept failure under my command, but I can sense that you have some good news to me, little and minor it is, but good news nonetheless."

Riser took a deep breath before proceeding, "Yes I have mortally wounded the Jedi Knight and traitor known as Tania Windwalker," as he brought the dismembered red twi'lek hand to Thrawn's view.

Thrawn's face seemed more contempt now when he saw this and spoke with little emotion, "I see, that is good news but not anything, monumental. Nonetheless, it is good news so you will not, of course, be punished but know that if these are the results I keep getting, that you'll be getting a personal visit from the emperor so that he can set you straight. Do I make myself clear?"

"Yes Grand Admiral, I hear you loud and clear, I will report back to you in person for a full mission debriefing." Riser responded, disappointedly.

As the comm link closed and Riser threw the dismembered hand of Tania, he embarked back to his personal TIE bomber before heading back to his personal Imperial Star Destroyer.

**Well, well, well. That was Chapter one of my newest story. I hope you enjoyed it! Now I really need your feedback for this if you want more. As much as I love improving my writing and trying to write interesting and fun stories, feedback is what you'll keep me going! So If you read until the end, please leave a comment, follow this story or like it so I know you guys want more of TBTA,THTF ( The bigger they are, The Harder they fall ). Anyways I hope you guys have a good rest of your night, day, or evening**

**Best regards,**

**Sskully 3**


	2. Chapter 2

_Tania was resting on the Black Pearl's small medical bay area with now having the procedure for her new robotic right hand just finished up as Ulysses was touching it up. The medical bay area was a small room near the cockpit of the freighter and you would pass it when entering the hallway from the center entertainment area. The area had two small stretchers that had been thoroughly cleaned, an array of cabinets with medicines, instruments and some pieces of scrap laying around; specifically being prosthetics pieces. To finish up the sweep of the area, medium 2 meter wide fluorescence lights hung above the room, illuminating the room. _

It had been a couple weeks since the incident with Felucia and Tania was now getting her robotic right hand. As Ulysses finished up touching up the robotic arm and proceeded to run through a calibration test with her.

"OK Tania, I am have to do some *snort* calibration tests with your new arm to make sure it's *snort* running at 110% efficiency"

Tania nodded her head.

"Ok, Phase 1: Raise your hand up and put it into a high five form." replied the ugnaught.

Feelings her Twi'lek, real nervous system connect with the synthetic nerves and wires, she raised her hand and without struggle, put it into a five high form. The Ugnaught saw this and recorded something onto a clipboard.

"Ok, now take your new hand and fist it for me," the ugnaught addressed next then following after his piggy snorting and squealing.

Tania had stifled her laughter after he squealed because even though they had been friends for nearly three years, she still found his squealing hilarious to her. Ulysses gave her the death glare when he recognized that she was holding in laughter and just responded with, "Yea, yea I get it, laugh at the squealing pig man. Just remember that I won't be afraid to set off the self destruct sequence in that arm."

Tania quickly shut up and her mouth agape in shock and surprise, wondering if the ugnaught was pulling her leg or being dead serious. Ulysses said this with all seriousness and started bursting out laughing in hysterics, snorting and squealing everywhere the moment he saw her face. It took him awhile to get ahold of himself before responding with, "I am of course just pulling your leg Tania, you should've seen the look on your face though. Priceless!"

Tania quickly grew embarrassed and punched him in the arm with her new robotic right hand and the ugnaught quickly jumped back in pain as he clutched his right arm but was still chuckling a bit.

"I can see that that arm is performing well already because, I, for sure felt that and deserved it," Ulysses responded to her punching him.

The pair joked around for awhile before Hailey walked into the room and looked at the two before saying, "Karus. Need both of you. He does," before walking out of the room and heading back towards the nearby cockpit of the freighter. Now something about Hailey was that her voice always when speaking normally was soft and gentle. Something about her upbringing made her speak very little common or that is what Karus had told them. The two looked at each other completely confused and unaware to what was happening before soon following after Hailey and ending up in the cockpit alongside Hailey, Karus, and Isslarok. Once the group was gathered in the room besides Heat as he was recharging himself, Karus spoke to the crowd.

"Ok now that everyone is here, let us get down to business: We have just received a transmission a couple hours ago from Polis Massa and you're not going to like the contents of it."

Karus soon pressed a small red button near them and a small hologram of a man in workers uniform appeared to them. The message started:

_If you are receiving this transmission, then you need to know that Polis Massa is lost now. We've tried to hide ourselves from the Empire but they found us! If you are hearing this and your with the rebellion, please help us._

The man looked dead ahead next and a horrifying expression took his face before ending with,

_Dammit! They broke in! Help us! HELP U-_

The Transmission cut out after that and the cockpit fell silent quickly before Tania spoke up.

"We need to investigate that now Karus. Those workers are in serious danger and need our help!"

"Yes, I understand that young Tania but you felt it too didn't you? Something felt wrong about this Transmission," the older man spoke.

She couldn't deny that one bit about Karus wise words: something felt incredibly off about this transmission but she couldn't place her finger on it. It tugged at her force aura and would until Isslarok spoke up and said, "I think it isssss a trap Karussss."

Her Twi'lek face grew angry after the old trandoshan said this and spewed back, "How could this even be a trap Isslarok! You saw the panic in his face! He was scared!"

"Calm Tania NOW! Do not let your anger take control of you. I think what Isslarok is saying is that before you came in this room, we checked the finer details of this distress message and noticed that it didn't have a date sent on it. Which I have to agree with my aura and that, itself, is very much suspicious," Karus said affirmatively.

Now Tania couldn't lie or be angry over that fact of the matter. If there wasn't a timestamp on the holotape then that in itself is very suspicious. Although they knew it was probably a trap set by the Empire, just in case it wasn't and the workers needed help now, they still had to investigate the recordings and Polis Massa now. The big question is who was to take the Spectre shuttle ship to investigate and who would stay back.

"I think the best course of action right now is to have two of us investigate Polis Massa *snort* right now and have the rest of us stay back and have the Pearl ready to leave and be ready if this is a trap," Ulysses advised to the crew.

"I agree with Ulysses here," Karus replied back to his statement, "So I think Hailey and Isslarok should go, I would say you Tania but you just got your new right hand."

"Doesn't that make me more viable to go on this mission Karus? I need to test this hand out to make Ulysses didn't actually put a self-destruction sequence in it and that it doesn't fail on me later," snapped back the red twi'lek.

"That makes you more less reasonable to go on this and not even adding the fact that you snapped on Isslarok just now. I need you to head to your room to meditate now and I'll meet you there in a while. Do I make myself clear Tania?" commanded Karus.

"I promisssse not to let you down Karusss," he said directing towards Karus as he turned to hailey and spoke in Trandoshan, "You ready to go out right now?"

Hailey spoke back to Isslarok in perfect Trandoshan, "Yes I am ready when you are ready Isslarok."

After Hailey finished her sentence, the two made their way towards the ladder in the common area that led to the docking bay for the Spectre shuttle ship. They boarded the smaller vessel that was attached to the Black Pearl and prepped the shuttle for lift off before the sound of engines was heard and the pair was off towards Polis Massa. The Black Pearl followed suite behind the spectre as both of the ships kicked into Hyperdrive and flew to Polis Massa.

* * *

As the two starcrafts reached the Polis Massa System, the Black Pearl stayed idle while the Spectre took flight into the meteorite that was known as Polis Massa. As The Spectre landed on Polis Massa, there was a certain eerie feel to the entire system and Isslarok tried to radio in.

"Polisssss Masssssaaaa, thisssss issss Ringer 3 from FR cell, do you copy, over?"

Static. Absolute static.

Polisssss Masssaaaa, Thisssss isss Ringer 3 from FR cell, do you copy, over dammit!"

Even more static.

If it wasn't creepy already to the pair, then now it was completely unnerving to the human and trandoshan. They ended up landing the shuttle onto docking bay 1 of 6 and killed the engines when they had came to a complete landing.

"This is really creepy Issla." Hailey spoke nervously as they exited the shuttle. They noticed that the gravity field around the singular space station was still active and running which, to most, would provide some sort of security to the pair, only if they hadn't just heard a rather disturbing holotape come from the comms relay of the station.

They walked down the grey metallic like pathway that led towards the common area of the building which when they got closer, noticed that the door was wide open. Isslarok investigated this and came to confusing discovery about this.

"Thisssss door wasssss opened or rather, jammed, sssssome time ago… that'ssss weird."

Hailey took a look at the forcily jammed opened door and came to the same realization as Isslarok did: the door did, matter of the fact, been jammed forcibly opened by a most likely, a strong individual. The pair stayed on alert as they entered the complex and came across a horrifying discovery inside: there was skeleton littering throughout the common area with furniture thrown about room and alongside with dried liquid that could only be concluded as blood, splattered everywhere. At the sight of this, Hailey opened up her Bo-rifle and opened up it to turn into dual-sided melee weapon with the ends of the weapon sparking a sickly yellow colour that coursed throughout the pongs at the ends. They readied themselves for anything that could surprise them at that moment.

Now the common room had 2 ways to go from where they were right now: they could either turn back and leave the system of Polis Massa and give a meager report to the crew or they could take the door about a couple meters northeastern to lead to a coded-door that lead to the comms relay. They decided to chose the latter of the options instead of the former. As the pair made their way towards the door, it automatically opened and revealed…

* * *

Back on the Black Pearl, Ulysses was checking out the systems of the freighter to make sure that they were prepped and ready for a quick escape, just in-case. Now as the ugnaught was doing this, he decided to check the holo-net about any recent attacks near the system of Polis Massa and uncovered something utterly confusing.

_Wait… It says here that Polis Massa was attacked a year ago under the suspicious of it being used as a comms relay on the Outer Rim for the Rebellion. Wait, that makes no sense. Why would we receive this transmission just now if they needed our help? Unless… Oh KARABAST!_

He quickly press the button to signal the small comms devices they had on them but played static.

"Karabast! Dammit," the ugnaught shouted at the top of his tiny lungs as he slammed the console.

Karus soon responded to this unusual outburst of the small pig man and came in, asking him what was the problem.

"Karus they walking into a damn trap," as he tried to gesture him to press the button that connected them to their smaller comms devices, Karus press the button and noticed what he realized was the same static as the station had, their comms were jammed. They knew it was a trap but then, 3 Imperial Star Destroyed dropped out of Hyperspace around the crew but luckily they had masked their signature before dropping into the Polis Massa system.

* * *

… revealed Imperial Agent Riser Mack standing there with a squadron of soldiers in dark black metallic stormtrooper armour but noticed that they also had equipped, jetpacks. Isslarok quickly drew out his dual DL-18 blaster pistols and immediately pointed one at one black-trooper and another at Riser. The dark troopers pointed their E-11D Model Blaster Rifles at them before two Terror troopers appeared at the sides of the squadron, one on the left and right.

Now these terror troopers were quite a terrifying sight to take in, in the fact that these troopers were something they had never seen: A slimmer physique to match their light dark grey armour that they wore. While most Stormtroopers were given blaster rifles, these troopers had razor sharp protruding claws built into their hands and a stun blaster along with it. Take in the fact with their orange tactical light near their skull resembling mask, they were terrifying.

"Well, well it seems the trandoshan and oh, A blind human?" Riser inquired.

_He thought that it could be potentially a Miraluka but he remembered learning about their extinction centuries upon millennials ago, by the Sith Empire, at one of their colonies named Katarr. How was it possible that they still live? No matter, Miraluka or not, they needed to be captured or, if needed, to be killed. _

"I will give you this chance to surrender to the Galactic Empire and I promise you will be given a fair trial," the agent said.

"That isssss a bunch of Rancor ssssshit and you know it!" Isslarok clapped back.

The agent sighed sadly and proceeded to answer back to his response with, " Kill them."

Blaster fire from the Dark troopers blasters immediately commenced and just in time, Isslarok hid in cover and Hailey was deflecting blaster fire with such ease that it would put most padawans to shame. Finding the exact time she needed, she ran towards a section of the soldiers and did a flip as she came down with a followed through strike to incapacitating two of the dark troopers before twirling her bo-rifle around her and behind her back and deflecting even more blaster. The trandoshan sighed loudly before poking out and getting a couple shots on the enemy.

He shouted, "TAKE COVER," as he lobbed a terminal denominator in the halls and the explosive went off, causing catastrophic damage to the hall and huge cracks within the reinforced glass panels that lined the hallway. He rushed into the hallway and found himself head-to-head with one of these terror troopers who quickly followed through with a claw strike to his face. He jerked his head back quickly before pulling out his vibro-axe and swinging at the terror. The trooper faded from the spot he just was to being right behind and swiped at his back which fortunately had his rifle still attached on its sling, so he just stumbled forward a bit, then the trooper faded again. He quickly looked over at Hailey's predicament and saw she incapacitated all the dark troopers and was facing the other terror and Riser both. He wanted to run to help her but found when he started to head her way, the terror trooper that was fighting him returned and swiped at him.

Hailey was deflecting all the shots that were directed towards her back at her senders and before not long, it was just her, the agent, and a terror trooper. She figured it be more helpful to defeat the terror trooper before taking on Riser but found that she was facing both opponents. Trading blows against the terror and Riser, she found a while longer after defeating the terror, it was just her and Riser. She took no time to connect her bo-rifle with his razor-sharp vibrosword and jumped back before force propelling herself forwards and connecting the two's weapons with more power, causing the agent to stumble back. She took this opportunity to hit him with one of the electrical pong end and caused sickly yellow electricity to course through his body before she pulled away. As she pulled away, the agent fell to his knees in clear pain and anguish.

"Where are workers," the young human shouted.

"Workers? They have been already tried for treason against the Galactic Empire and the decision to exterminate them was made a year ago," The agent responded, a bit confused.

Hailey was getting angrier and angrier and was about to finish him before Isslarok grabbed her shoulder and spoke in trandoshan, saying, "There are 3 Imperial Star Destroyers here, we need to leave this system now!"

"But what about the prisoners? We can't leave them," responded the Hailey.

"That was a ruse to lure us here, the Empire killed them a long time ago," replied back to her.

She looked behind them at the skeletons and nodded her head slowly before taking off towards the direction of the Spectre shuttle. They dodged TIE Fighter lasers directed towards them and boarded the Spectre shuttle ship. Isslarok quickly started up the engines and lifted off with a quick takeoff. They entered space a little while afterwards as TIE Fighters were hot on their tail and were only barely managing to dodge their laser fire. Isslarok picked up the comms system and tried reaching the Black Pearl but only got static.

As TIE Fighters got a lock on there shuttle, they for surely thought they were done with until red laser fire passed them and explosions were heard off next to them. The Black Pearl passed overhead them and they soon followed suit. After awhile of avoiding laser fire directed towards them, the Spectre managed to dock in its docking port.

Ulysses saw on the panel that indicated whenever the Spectre was in the docking bay or not, was lit green, he soon quickly strayed into deep space and jumped quickly to hyperspeed. Sooner or later, Isslarok and Hailey joined them in the cockpit of the Black Pearl Karus and Ulysses were waiting.

"So I am guessing it was right that it was a trap?" Ulysses questioned.

The pair just nodded their heads before going down the ladder in the cockpit the lead to the living quarters of the crew. Ulysses sighed deeply and so did Karus before he said, "When will we get a victory I wonder?"

* * *

As Riser picked himself up after the two rebels had left him all alone in the now destroyed hallways of the station, he wondered what the human meant by, "alive workers." He wasn't even told about this, all he was told by Thrawn was that he was setting up a trap for Riser to spring on the Rebels and wanted him to be down on Polis Massa to captured and/or kill the rebels if necessary. He took out his communication device and got in contact with Grand Admiral Thrawn to report his failure, but more like Thrawn's failure.

"Thrawn, your plan didn't work like you said, the rebel known as Isslarok, Ex-Bounty Hunter, has escaped."

Thrawn sighed with much annoyance and replied to his response with, "Head agent, I thought I already told you, that I don't accept incompetence. You better have good news to me, being it minor or not."

_My incompetence! You're the one who thought of this plan! _Riser thought to himself.

He remembered quickly soon about the blind woman and perked up and said, "Well yes, I have come to tell you that the Freedom Ringers have an unknown 7th member of their little rebellion cell."

"Oh," Thrawn said with cold enthusiasm, "and who would this new member be, hmm?"

"A Blind human sir. It seems that in, some way, she can still see even with her bandages covering her eyes," responding to his enthusiasm with this information.

"Ah, a Miraluka? Well that certainly makes things more interesting now, does it agent," Thrawn said with concern in his tone and ended off with, "Fully debrief me in my chambers and we'll speak of your punishment there," and with that, the call ended and Riser sighed, thinking what was in store for him.

**So this one was a wayyyyy longer one: Over 3000+ words :o! Expect the chapter to be this long between 1900-3000+ words. I want each chapter to feel complete and organize and unless I am doing a many part series to lead up to a grand finale ( being the end of the story or a major plot point in the story ), you should expect this. Anyways, I had fun writing this one and I hope you all have a fantastic day!**

**Regards**

**~Sskullz **


	3. Chapter 3

Few weeks had passed ever since the second encounter between the imperial agent Riser Mack and the Freedom Ringers. Although, tensions were still high as of now because they were about to board a Zygerrian slave ship. They got word from a secret informant, only known by the rebellion as Fulcrum agents, about this slave ship. The following transmission for this mission went down like this:

* * *

_As Ulysses and Isslarok were sitting in the cockpit of the freighter when they noticed a blue light was flashing, indicating that a transmission was coming in. They were rather hesitate to communicate with whoever was on the line but Ulysses told Issla to mask their transmission code, when the trandoshan complied with the orders and followed them through, the transmission went like this. _

_A rather feminine voice came through the intercom, "This is Fulcrum, FR, We have a report of a Zygerrian slave ship soon entering the Raxus system in 21:00 as we speak now. We need you and your team to intercept this slave ship and release the slaves. After this transmission ends, coordinate points will be transmitted to your ship anonymously and proceed to prep your team for inception. Fulcrum Out." _

"_It could be a trap Ulyssesssssss," commented the trandoshan. _

_Ulysses quickly commented back saying, "Issla, You should know that only the Rebellion knows about the Fulcrum frequency. I highly doubt the Imperials have caught on to this frequency." _

"_Do you think that damned agent could be in charge," questioned the trandoshan._

"_Highly unlikely, A high ranking *snort* empirical officer like him? There's no way in the galaxy they would send him on this mission. I suspect that it's just some rotten Trandoshan, no offense, *snort* slavers working dirty work for the Empire for a quick pay." _

_The Trandoshan scoffed at this bad retort of a joke whilst proceeding to roll his eyes, albeit, annoyingly, and informed the ugnaught that he would gather the group to be debriefed on the mission. _

* * *

Tania, who for once, didn't like what they had planned for the mission. They were planning on using the Black Pearl's unique escape pod to shoot her near the slave ship and have her be captured by the slavers, feigning herself as an escaped slave. Once inside, she was meant to make contact with the slaves and gain their cooperation so that they could all escape. Although she couldn't find it in her to argue about the plan: It was, in all fairness, a rather good plan by Karus.

The thing she felt most uncomfortable about this plan was the rather skimpy and revealing slave clothes she had to brandish. A gold leathery bikini top with a black ring, holding the two pieces in place. Along with this was a scraggy and dirty cloth that acted as her under piece for the outfit. Although there was a galactic multi-tool, which included a picklock, laser cutter, and a small arms blaster, between her chest, which was big enough to conceal it enough to not look inconspicuous.

"Ugh, this feels so, just, wrong," she said to herself.

"You look very pretty," Hailey innocently said to cheer her up. She could, though the force, understand the twi'lek's uncomfortable feelings with this plan. The young miralukian woman comforted the older twi'lek as she rub her back. Tania did truly accept the young woman's concern for her and thanked her for it. Afterwards, Hailey left her room.

"You ready for this," questioned the older jedi as he walked into Tania's room.

"How could anyone be ready to act as a slave," replied Tania back to Karus with nervousness.

Karus came over and also sat next to the younger twi'lek and turned to face her whilst sitting.

"You are being sent since there's Twi'leks on that ship and they will listen to you easier since you're one of them. If the Twi'leks listen to you, the Togrutas will follow suit," explained Karus before he ended off with, "This is a huge service you'll be doing for the rebellion cells, these slaves are special in a sense."

Tania was confused what he meant and Karus could sense it and before she could get a word out, he answered her impending question, "Don't worry, we'll be on the black pearl, waiting for your sign to board the ship with the Pearl herself. Here how about I do this," as Karus proceeded to recite some unknown, weird chant. When he was done, he gave her a hug which she buried her face into the nook of his neck.

"What was that silly chant," inquired the twi'lek, her voice murmured by the older man's skin.

He chuckled a hardy, old veteran's chuckle as he followed with, "It is just a silly chant my old padawan would do before a mission, I see why she did it now."

She had only heard stories of her padawan: A Mon Calamarian Jedi who was strong in force. She had never actually learned what happened to her but knew it wasn't the time to ask the older jedi.

She withdrew herself from the friendly embrace and stood up and gave him a firm nod to indicate that she was ready. Karus was knew that when it came to Tania, she was a special case when she first entered the Order: Glad-hearted and she would act through her emotions. He was glad to have met her before the fall of the order and that ex-Jedi Master Plo Koon was her master.

Few more hours had now just passed, they had just dropped from hyperspace and Tania was now in the pod, waiting for the order to eject. Karus, Isslarok, and Ulysses were all located in the Cockpit at the moment with Ulysses in the driver position and Karus as the co-pilot for this operation. The trio waited with anticipation inside the cockpit of the freighter and had their signature scramblers already going to work to mask their mark. An hour or two would pass before the silence would finally be broken by the trandoshan.

"A sssship issss dropping out of hyperssspace in an ETA of few sssssecondsss," hissed the old lizard-folk.

"Now," exclaimed the old jedi.

Tania got the affirmative over her intercom inside the escape pod and proceeded to eject the pod from its container forward into unknown space. A feeling of anxiousness and anxiety filled the middle-aged twi'lek as she drifted further and further away from the Black Pearl. As a last gesture of good faith, Karus sought deep into his connection with the twi'lek and gave her force aura a comforting embrace and reminded her that she could do it. With one last deep breath and Karus' force embrace, she got ready to put on a show for these slavers.

* * *

As the crew entered the Raxus system, the captain hissed, "Ok, you sssscum, check the radar to make ssssure no rebel ssssshipssss enter thissss ssssysssstem."

The crew nodded in agreeance to the captain's words and kept tabs on all the systems and controls. When they drew closer to the planet known as Raxus Prime, one of the workers, an Ugnaught, who worked comms squealed open his mouth and said, "Captain, someone *snort* is trying to make contact with us!"

"Who," yelled the captain at the small pigman.

The ugnaught played the transmission and a feminine voice came over, "Help! Please! I was captured by slavers and I need help! I managed to escape luckily but I am stuck in an escape pod!"

"Where are you," commanded the captain.

He noticed that on the main terminal, a note of coordinates popped up and directed the crew to intercept the escape. When the crew asked why he was helping them he just replied with that the Empire wouldn't mind one more worker on the workforce for Raxus Prime and It would also just mean that they would just be paid more now. The ship crew rejoiced at this fact but the Captain reminded them that you can be happy when we get paid.

* * *

Stuck inside one huge metallic jail cell, Tania stood their, using her multi-tool to disarm and unshackle all of the prisoners. Once she was done she counted the number of heads in the cell: 6 Twi'leks and 4 Togrutas, 10 total prisoners of war. The prisoners were scared and confused but were self-aware enough to realize that she was helping them.

"So you're helping them as so I was sent also to by another cell huh," a disembodied voice echoed in the crowd. She looked around to see who the voice belonged to but didn't have to look long before a orange Togruta in her same old jedi knight inner robe appear before her. She had two lightsabers clipped to her belt alongside with a certain wise aura to her.

"Ahsoka Tano…" she quickly hugged her old friend, "what are you doing here also?"

"I was also too sent on a mission by another rebel cell to rescue these prisoners," Ahsoka responded.

"I am never more glad to see you honestly, old best friend," the only slightly older twi'lek proclaimed.

"As for I am too, but you do have a plan to get out of here because you wouldn't wear clothes like that if you didn't," replied the younger tortuga woman.

She informed the crowd on her plan to have two of the prisoners act like they needed serious medical attention. Once that would happen, they would sent a few guards to keep on the "merchandise" since she knew that they wouldn't risk confrontation with the Empire if they didn't get its full package of new slaves. From there, they would overpower the ship, submit them into submission as to not kill the crew and then signal the Black Pearl for EVAC when they were successful.

* * *

As the crew drew closer to Raxus Prime, one of the crew members signalled for the captain to come here. The captain sighed of annoyance and proceeded to make his way over to the Zabrak member who was signalling him.

"What do you need, you incompetent reject rancor," the captain hissed angrily.

"Well s..sir, there seems to be a problem in the slave quarters, our guys are reporting that two of the slaves need immediate medical attention now," the zabrak said, stumbling over his words, "Should we give them clearance to enter?"

"Oh, you fucking ssssstupid horned reject rancor," he hissed loudly, "Of courssssse they sssssshould invessssstigate! I am not getting my paid docked just becaussssse a couple of sssssoldiersssss can't follow damn ordersssss!"

The zabrak signalled back to the guards to escort the two injured to the medical bay to be treated by the droids that occupied. As minutes passed, awaiting a response from the two guards, he heard blaster fire within the ship and it startled the entire crew. The entirety of the crew, immediately, stopped working that instant and slowly turned their heads towards the door that led out to the other parts of the ship. Silence filled up the lack of sound of the command room as they all waited in anticipation for something to happen next. Then suddenly, a white lightsaber pierced through the metallic slide door as it slowly cut its way through. Once there was now a orange oval-like circle in the door, it was forcibly removed from its position as a orange Togruta and red Twi'lek, both of them wielding one white lightsaber. Both of them had a crew member of the ship restrained right there and that left the captain on his own. Realizing he wasn't in a position to fight, he dropped his DH-17 blaster pistol and raised his hands in a surrendering position.

She was surprised that the plan went off without a hitch or hiccup in it. The guards believed that the two prisoners were actually injured but then again, she could sense foolish from a member of the crew, maybe the captain? As Ahsoka and Tania made their way down towards where the cockpit is, they fought their way through multiple guards; slashing, deflecting, and pummeling through the merger resistance the guards portrayed. That was until they came up to a heavily armoured rodian wielding a E-Web heavy repeating blaster cannon. Ahsoka told Tania to prep the slaves for extraction and meet up with her in front of the cockpit. Tania nodded complying with the command and took off down the corridor towards the right, leaving the Rodian and Ahsoka alone.

She entered into the Shii-cho saber form and readied herself to face this rather difficult-looking foe. The rodian acted quickly, bought his cannon to a fire stance and started letting shots fly through the air, which sailed right past her. She did a force push on the heavy target, which caused him to stumble back a bit before Ahsoka connected his chin with her fist. This caused the rodian's head to jerk upwards and felt a jolting pain in his stomach as Ahsoka channelled some of her force into her next move, which was a punch to his stomach. He quickly composed himself. Dropped his repeater and threw a punch at her face, rather rashly and ended up missing. She followed through with his punch by grabbing his thrown fist, twisting it behind his back and throwing him over her shoulder. The rodian was, indefinitely, now out colder than the space's atmosphere and made her way towards the cockpit.

* * *

"Ringer 1, We have the captives secured and near the docking board, readied to be extracted," said Tania over the comms to the Black Pearl.

"Great job Ringer 3! We are now boarding the zygerrian slave ship, get ready for a boarding party," responded the voice over the comms. This voice was feminine and definitely no-one she knew.

After the call ended, she turned towards Ahsoka and commented, "Be ready, our escape may have been compromised…"

Ahsoka said whilst chuckling, "Oh no no no, I know who that was, she's with us, so don't worry."

She shrugged nonchalantly, thinking that if Ahsoka knew her then that meant they were fine. They made there way towards the docking tube where all the other freed captives and saw the docking tube door open and a blond, caucasian woman stepped into the premise. She was fresh into her twenties, wearing a green rebellion jacket and white tank. Her hair was tied back into a rather long ponytail as she made her way towards the two jedis whilst the captives piled into the rebel ship.

"Who are you," questioned the red twi'lek.

"Well Tania, I am Captain Juno Eclipse of the Rebellion," said the younger woman.

Tania couldn't lie when she thought this woman was absolutely beautiful but she didn't let her appearance distract her from her next question, "Well Captain, what is to happen with the freed captives as of now?"

"As of now, I can't say much but I can say that they will be crucial to building a larger rebellion force to take on the Empire," before then turning to Ahsoka and asking her a rather cryptic question, "Did you get any word on him?"

Juno was shocked to see Ahsoka smile and knew that it would be good news, "I didn't hear much from the captives but the specific contact was on this ship and told me that the real one lived but didn't have a location yet."

Juno started tearing up as an even huger smile plastered her face as she spoke, stuttering over herself, "I can't believe… and you're sure this is confirmed? I don't want to lead the rebellion into a trap, I couldn't live with myself if I did that even if it was for him."

"Shared the same cell and everything before being put on this transport by mistake, told me that if you didn't believe them, to tell you that, the phoenix rises when the jedi rein triumph."

Juno's tears started running in bunches now as she muttered to herself, "I can't believe he's alive, by the force, I am so happy…"

Ahsoka comforted the woman and told Tania that her ride was the next ship. As Ahsoka held the woman and walked towards into the other ship, Tania waited as the tube door closed and a rebellion capital ship departed from the docking area. As she heard the ship take to hyperspace, another ship docked the docking tube: The Black Pearl.

Few seconds passed before the door opened and a familiar older jedi appeared with his arms stretched out. She ran to him and proceeded to cry into his arms as he wrapped his arms around her smaller body in a tight embrace. He rubbed her back and told her she did a damn good job. As this happened, the Black Pearl undocked from the slave ship and proceeded to jump to hyperspace in a different direction from where the other ship did. Mission Accomplished.

**That's a wrap for this chapter. Hope you guys enjoyed it as much as I did writing it! give your feedback on how you think the story is going so far or advice you'd give me. I enjoy feedback and constructive criticism. Anyways have a good day, afternoon, and/or evening.**

**~Skully**


	4. Chapter 4

**( P.S. If you got an alert for a new chapter sorry but there were some errors, missing words + grammacal errors within the story that annoyed me so I decided to update the chapter before I continued with Chapter five. So if you have already read this, know I added nothing new to the story so just dismiss this Chapter if you've already read it. If not then enjoy Chapter** 4! )

_It had been around 2 weeks or so since Riser had graduated from the Imperial Cadet Program. He was sitting in his quarters, on board his parents Imperial Star Destroyer, as he laid in his bed and was tired from the first day of official special training. He was being specially trained by the Grand Admiral himself because of his exceptional unwavering loyalty and extreme willingness to serve to the Empire to the Max. There he would learn more about different Planets' culture and battle strategy since his opponents would be merger rebel cells but was firmly taught not to underestimate an enemy, albeit, small or large. _

_His quarters comprised of a small bed in the right hand corner, a small end table + sink combination at the end of his bed and to the far left of it was a small metallic table with a computer setup so that if needed to, he could do paperwork in privacy._

_He was impatient and absolutely despised lazing about, so he decided to head towards the training room to get some extra fitness in. While walking towards his destination, he ran into his father. Now his father was a much older man who had a set gray hair and brandished grey imperial officer suit alongside his piercing blue eyes and 6'1 stature. _

"_Ah my son, how does training fair for you? I hear the Grand Admiral has been giving you a good mouthful to learn," said his father. _

"_Yes father, It's been quite exhausting nonetheless, but I am willing to learn about the Empire's enemies and bring them in for their crimes, like you guys did," he enthusiastically proclaimed. _

_His father face went from stone-faced to troubled in a quick second before he complied the next sentence into his lips, "Hmm, I see. Yes, our enemies and has Thrawn explained why these people deserve it?" _

"_Not really, all he said that was they are enemies to the Galactic Empire and threaten our way of life and economy. I agree with them that they need to be captured, tried so that we may live peacefully and prosperfully," explained his son before continuing with, "Why do you say all of this now Father? You've been acting weird for awhile now." _

_His face drifted away from his sons' eyes as he chose his next statement carefully, speaking out like this could incite treasonist intentions and that was the last thing he wanted the Empire to realize. _

"_Just when you get older, try to figure out things for yourself and don't always do what people want you to," before his face going back to its loving father smile and finishing off with before walking forwards, "Be careful my son, not everything you hear is the truth." _

_Riser stood there, taking into what his father said just now. _

'_What did he mean, "not everything you hear is the truth."?' _

_He shook it off but took a note of it at least, for his father's sake. As he continued down the hallways of the Star Destroyer, he passed many officers and troopers scuttling about, talking about topics that were unimportant to him: ship reports, rebellion activity, potential trade routes. Although there was one conversation that caught his ear quite quickly: discussion of potential defectors within the Empire. He listened in very close but hid, so that he may hinder the conversation. _

"_Did you hear what Thrawn said in today's meeting Helia," whispered one of the officers. _

_The female officer said to be named Helia, replied back with her own whispered voice, "Yea, I heard it might be the Mack's but I don't think the son's involved though." _

"_You never know Helia, the son could just be feigning ignorance to throw us off, he could be plotting with them. After all, he's their kid." _

' _Wait what was this he was hearing? His own parents? Betraying the Empire? They were the most radical for the Empire's causes then anyone he had the chance of knowing.' _

_Although it was starting to somewhat fall into pieces for him. What his father had told him before he left him to go wherever he was going. _

' _Not everything you hear is the truth.? ' _

_Not only with this information but also the fact that they had been acting different ever since their last assignment to Onderon around 10 months ago now. Before that assignment, they were sent there to blockade the planet on accounts that the rebels were planning something on the system. When they came back, it was almost like they were completely new individuals to him. He always knew his parents growing up as cold, heartless and destructive to anyone but their family but when they came back, they were more depressed and cynical, almost like their lives up until now were complete lies. _

_Could it be his parents? If it was, he had to know why they would even think about defecting from the Empire now. They were on the verge of complete control of the galaxy and it would be a waste of their lives to just leave now. The more he thought about it, the more betrayed he started to feel from his parents. Here they taught him their ideals alongside the Empire's and in all fairness, they practically drilled it into him. Now he was hearing now that they could be potentially leaving the Empire and not only the Empire, him. They had never told him anything about what happened on Onderon and albeit, no-one knew what happened; besides Grand Admiral Thrawn._

_These conflicting thoughts kept his mind wandering to conclusions to conclusions, with each being similar or different from why they hadn't told him. That's until he came down to one certain conclusion to why they hadn't told him: They didn't trust their own damn son!_

_This enraged him more than ever in his life. His own parents didn't trust him with what happened! He turned back immediately to confront his parents but was stopped in his tracks when an ear-piercing alarm blared throughout the complex destroyer. That's when his heart would dropped at the sound of the intercom sounding throughout the alarm:_

"_This is Grand Admiral Thrawn, Fera and Hades Mack are escaping this Star Destroyer, stop them and arrest them now!"_

_The word he never thought he'd hear in his life, ever. The words that his parents were trying to defect from the Empire. _

_He raced back down the hallways he just passed and officers yelled at him whilst he was doing it. They thought he was in alliance with what his parents were doing but he wasn't, he was running to find them but not to arrest them but to get the answers that he rightfully deserved. He had finally reached the end of the hallways and took a left and ran into his mother surprisingly._

"_Mother! What are you and dad doing?"_

_His mother, on the contrary to his father, looked young for being in her early 50's: long brown hair and pools of honey that were her eyes. She stood around 5'10 stature and was still in shape for her age. _

"_Son we don't have time to talk now. We have to go before the Empire catches us," proclaimed his mother._

"_NO! I am not going anywhere with you traitors! Not until you tell me why you're leaving," Riser yelled, trying to choke down his tears. _

"_Son, not right now please. I know you want to know, I know you want to know why we are leaving and what happened on Onderon but if we get out of here, Your father and I can explain everything, I promise." _

_He wanted to believe his mother and father's intentions were truthful but the ideals of the Empire had corrupted him to the point where he couldn't bring himself to follow her. So when she tried to drag him with her, he stood there in one place and just shook his head. _

"_But son… you have to… please," said his mother, practically choking back tears. _

"_I am sorry mother, I...I.. I just can't. If what you say is true. Then I want my own evidence. I won't tell anyone I saw you leaving but don't come back for me, I am sorry," he said as walked away from his mother. Fera yelled for her son to come back but soon realized that officers were coming after her and had to make a break. _

_That would be the last time he saw his parents…. Right?_

* * *

He woke up after someone tapped his face.

He was in his quarters on board his star destroyer, was panting and with a cold sweat dripping down his head. He looked around fanatically with his sonic blaster in hand, pointed at the individual who disturbed his slumber and noticed it was just Arihnda Pryce a.k.a Governor Pryce.

"Oh it's just you Arihnda, god, don't wake me up like that, especially if I'm tossing and turning in my bed. I could've shot you or worse," the agent sighed.

The governor looked at him with concern and asked, "what was the dream about Riser?"

"Well it was just a dream/flashback of when my parents betrayed the Empire by defecting, anyways what did you need," questioned the agent.

"Well Thrawn sent me personally to retrieve for another plan he wants you to do and told you to meet him in the bridge. That's all he told me," the governor said.

The agent grumbled and groaned at hearing this request and Pryce knew he didn't like going through some of thrawn's plans sometimes, despite if he was a genius or not. He yawned one last time before rolling out of bed and proceeded to get changed into his uniform.

Few minutes passed and Pryce couldn't lie that Riser wasn't not attractive rather he was probably the finest, most clean looking agent and/or soldier she had ever seen. Though she blushed at his muscular body and quickly turned around when Riser turned around while changing into his unique agents' uniform. He chuckled at this and said, "Why are you being so quiet Arihnda? I have practically known you since I was a kid, you had to expect me to grow up sometime."

"We..Well yes that much is true, still surprises me how tall you are," Pryce responded back, stumbling over her own words as she spoke.

He chuckled even more now as he finished completely getting dressed and started to walk past her before, suddenly, he pinned her up against the wall near his desk, arms above her head with one hand and he cupped his other hand around her chin. He got super close to her ear before whispering rather flirtatiously, "For an older woman, you're pretty attractive yourself. I wouldn't mind going a couple rounds with you," before pushing off her gently and walking away, towards Thrawn's office. He so badly wanted to look at her blushing red face but he didn't need to as he heard her yell, "Just get to the damn bridge before I throw you in the Brig!" He couldn't help himself from bursting out laughing in hysterics as he made his way towards the Bridge.

As Riser entered the Bridge, he saw Grand Admiral Thrawn around the central console inside the bridge looking at some type of schematics. When Thrawn noticed the younger agent, he turned off what he was looking at and proceeded to gesture over the agent. When Riser finally reached the central console, Thrawn began discussing his plan with him.

"Head Agent Riser Mack, As you may have heard from Governor Pryce, I have to discuss with you another plan to finally capture these pesky rebels," he said.

"What plan have you conspired this time Grand Admiral," questioned the Imperial agent.

"This plan I have built will involve collateral damage to someone you once knew but trust me, their sacrifice for our Empire will provide us with the needed victory we need to stop these Freedom Ringers."

**Sorry if this chapter a bit short than the rest, I didn't want to rush the plan Thrawn has in stored for the Freedom Ringers and so I decided to wait until next chapter to do it!. Also you just got a pretty good snippet of Riser Mack's past life! Has he always been this complacent? He is just feigning loyalty, will leave soon, will he die?****Anyways hope you enjoyed today's chapter! ( P.S. If you got an alert for a new chapter sorry but there were some errors and missing words. )**

**Have a great Morning, Afternoon and/or Evening!**

**~Skully**


	5. Chapter 5

As the Imperial shuttle entered into the Dathomir system, Hailey and Karus looked over the now Imperial controlled red planet. There were 3 Imperial Star destroyers surrounding the planet with an unknown outer metallic-like ring surrounding the planet with tubes puncturing the planets sources, drawing forth some unknown green, glowing liquid.

"Karus, what is ring used for," Hailey asked the older Jedi.

Karus looked at the ring and proceeded to close his eyes to feel the aura around it. The aura he felt was incredibly ancient and old; a magic that hadn't been used in decades now. He deduced that the ring was used to keep the nightsister's magic contained within the ring as some sort of magically energy source. He felt an unexpected tug at his force aura whilst feeling the emotions in the energy: it was Hailey. She had tagged into his aura and said, " _What happened to the Nightsisters?"_

Karus replied over the connection, "_The Nightsisters were a powerful group of witches who used the force in a different type of way to fuel their powers. I only met them once but they were quite fascinating nonetheless."_

Hailey was fascinated with Karus' old war stories and now she always wanted to know more of his time during the Clone Wars but before she could ask anything else, Karus said, "Landing in 2100, get your helmet on now, don't want the Empire suspecting anything."

She sighed sadly and Karus could tell that she wanted to hear more stories and smirked at the much younger woman and chuckled softly, "I can tell you more stories later, I promise Hailey dear."

Hailey smiled at the older jedi when he said this and proceeded to put on her helmet.

They were nearing closer to the complex when a voice came through the intercom on the shuttle, "Imperial Shuttle D-1652, what are you doing here?"

The voice was one of an officer and he responded with, "Central command, this is Commander Frederick Storms, requesting permission to extract the prisoner known as MD Prisoner-0001."

Radio silence droned on for awhile before the voice was heard through the intercom once again, saying, "Imperial Shuttle D-1652, requesting your entry code into this complex and the mission code for such a high valued extraction of a prisoner."

"_Let's hope that these codes work still," _Karus thought to himself.

"Sending over the mission code: Admin Echo-512DF-4

Even more radio silence was heard on the intercom as they waited in anticipation as the officer was confirming these codes. The silence was broken when the intercom came back on and the officer replied with, "Imperial Shuttle D-1652, you are cleared for landing and the extraction/relocation of MD Prisoner-0001. Proceed with landing procedures and standby for the agent that is going to be stationed there."

_Agent? Oh no, _Karus thought to himself, _They couldn't be talking about him? Could they? This would complicate things if they were true. _

* * *

Now Riser Mack had no clue who this prisoner was on the Dathomir Prison Complex but apparently she was a past war criminal of the Empire. Even when he tried to inquire to Thrawn about who the prisoner was, he would shut him down by saying that it wasn't important but he knew that the Freedom Ringers would take the bait. Although one thing Thrawn didn't know was that who was going to take it.

XXX

"_Head agent, I have assigned this task to you because the Emperor, himself, wanted you to prove that you were still useful to our Empire. If you are to fail this task and don't capture the rebels this time, he informed me to tell you to execute on the spot. I hope you know that if this the unfortunate result of this mission, that it will be quick and painful."_

_He was conflicted and troubled by this news from the Emperor. He knew now that he couldn't mess this up now. _

"_Where shall I go for this mission and where I do bring the prisoner," asked the agent. _

"_I want you to head over to Dathomir, there you will land onto the Dathomir Prison Complex we have built there. Take the prisoner out of the Complex using the Imperial Codes I have sent to your terminal and transport them to the designated spot that I have placed. From there, you'll scuttle the ship by docking into a TIE Bomber that'll follow you there. You'll send a distress signal, which in-turn, should signal these Freedom Ringers to take action. When the sector is entered by the Rebels, we'll know and my fleet will intercept them from there to destroy these rebels."_

_XXX_

These were the last words the Grand Admiral said to him before he departed on an Imperial Shuttle to Dathomir.

He was still caught up on who was the prisoner as he was entering the system of the Dathomir which was apart of the Quelli Sector of the Outer Rim Territories.

_Who was this prisoner he was talking about? I mean they couldn't be that Important if was willing to sacrifice them for nothing basically. _

The more Riser started to dwell on the Blue Chiss' words, the more worried he got. That's when it finally hit him all at once and he turned white like he'd seen a ghost.

_There's no way it could be them… after all this time… I thought they died when they tried to escape? _

He needed to confirm this was who he thought it was. Now.

* * *

As Karus and Hailey docked onto the landing pad, an Imperial officer came to visit them with a squadron of troops following in behind him. When the loading hatch finally dropped, the officer was surprised to see just two stormtroopers inside the shuttle. He looked at them mildly confused and asked, "Uh, why are there only two of you on the shuttle Commander?"

"Sir, we were requested by the Grand Admiral himself to escort the prisoner to their new location. He had reports that some rebel scum were thinking about infiltrating the complex and wanted to move them to a more secure complex. Now unless you want the Grand Admiral to have both of our heads," then saying the last of his words using force persuasion," I would highly recommend that you just let us pass."

The officer's mind was susceptible to the persuasion because the next words that came out of his mouth were, "It would be recommended to let you pass," as he ordered his squadron behind him to let them pass.

Hailey was completely shocked at what he just did. She has seen him do this before whilst on missions but it was always a pleasant surprise whenever he did this. The two force sensitive individuals walked passed them, disguised in their stormtrooper armour and made their way towards the maximum security detention cells.

* * *

Riser Mack's shuttle was nearing the planet of Dathomir and when he entered within comms range of the complex, his intercom lightened up, signalling that someone was trying to contact him. He pressed the lightened up button and a voice came on over the intercom, " Imperial Shuttle…. Wait. Imperial Shuttle D-1652? You already docked on the landing pad, who is this," the voice questioned over the intercom.

_Wait what did he mean that his shuttle already docked on the landing pad. _

Sure enough, when he neared where he was supposed to land, there was already a landing craft docked there. This mildly confused him, being the fact that no-one was scheduled to visit.

"This is Head agent Riser Corellius Mack, Why is there another damn shuttle docked on my landing pad," he said passive aggressively.

"Riser?! You're finally here now? Wait if that isn't your shuttle then… who is that," inquired the voice.

"Well officer, who did the people in the other shuttle say they were," the agent questioned.

Radio silence droned on for awhile before the voice over the intercom said, "They, well, one of them said they were Stormtrooper Commander Frederick Storms, but now that I realize it, he's still stationed in Mustafar, isn't he?"

Before they could come up with a reasonable conclusion to this huge mix-up by the officer, Riser heard an alarm blared through the intercom and a voice said, "The Control Room has been breached, requesting all guard personal stop this at once."

_Rebels… _Riser thought to himself.

* * *

As Karus and Hailey made their way through the detention cells of the Dathomir complex, they passed many different prisoner of different races and species. Hailey looked at them through her helmet with genuine sadness and Karus could feel this. He told her, over their bond, _We can't save them now, we need the prisoner in the maximum detention cell of D-0001, they have inside information on the Empire that we crucially need._

_But I feel sadness Karus, some these people aren't even guilty of crimes, _she mumbled over the connection

_I know but extracting this prisoner will give us the edge we need to build a stronger rebellion Hailey. Please know that if I could and you know I would, free these other prisoners if we had time but we don't Hailey, _responding to Hailey and sending her an embracing wave of force to her aura. She felt relieved and not as sad now but there was still a heaviness in her heart. She would go back to save them after this specific prisoner was safe and wouldn't care if she was captured in the process because at least she would have good conscious knowing that she tried. Although Karus wouldn't know that and she somehow managed to block him out of her mind for awhile, she didn't want him to know what she was planning.

As they passed many detention cells, they had finally reached the maximum security detention cells and were stopped by a guard personnel guarding the entrance.

"Cylinder please."

"I am here on the Mission code: Admin Echo-512DF-4, I need to take MD Prisoner-0001," replied Karus.

"Oh I am sorry sir, I didn't know it was you Storms. Please, head right ahead," he said as he pressed a button on the terminal near the door and the heavily plated door was opened. They noticed that the MD cell was just a singular cell that had no bed, toilet, or anything at all. They saw an older woman, around Karus' age. Chained up on chains that held her suspended above in the air. It looked like she was recently just suspended back up there and they walked up to her. As Karus walked up to the woman, Hailey slipped away from there and headed towards the control room.

"Well, well, you must be the prisoner. Fera Amethyst Mack, Daughter of Yuri Mack and mother of that damned Imperial agent," Karus said walking up to the chains. The old woman looked at him and spewed, "What do you want Storms, come to torture me?"

Karus took his helmet off and said, "Unless you want force wielders to torture you, then I would highly suggest you take the alternative option and escape with us."

Fera looked at him confused and replied," Us? Are you sure that your head is working still after all this time Karus Marcellus V?"

Karus was now confused and was shocked when he realized that Hailey was gone now.

_Where did she go, _he thought to himself before replying out loud with, "She went to free the other prisoners, KARABAST."

* * *

Hailey made her way towards the control room of the complex, passing many cells and guards whilst doing this. When she finally arrived at the door that said 'Control Room', she tapped into the force and saw into the door's locking mechanism. It was a rather difficult one but overtime she managed to open up the door and let herself in. There were few Imperial officers guarding the space with machinery and consoles taking up most of the space. Although there was a central console in the middle of all the machinery and a head officer stood there. It took awhile before an officer noticed the stormtrooper standing in the opening of the door and when he did, he said, "Stormtrooper, what are you doing here? This is a high clearance sector and unless you have clearance I suggest you leave before we detain you."

Hailey just stood there looking at them before one of the other officers realized something and spoke out, "Wait a second, Stormtroopers don't wield Bo-rifles," it took him awhile before realizing," You're the Rebel Miraluka we've been hearing about," and then sounded the alarm.

As Riser's Imperial shuttle landed in the extra landing pad, he made haste march towards the control room of the complex. As he passed the grey metallic walls of the complexes hallways, he came up to an intersection of the complex that had 3 ways to go: Left, Right and Center. He knew that the control room on this prison complex was straight forward and that the prisoner cells were located to his left along with the cantina being to his right. As he looked left, he saw Stormtrooper Commander Storms dragging his mother, out towards where supposedly his landing pad should've been.

_Wait, His mother was still alive after all this time. I thought she died in the escape? Wait, was she the prisoner he was suppose to bait the rebels with? _

Anyways he quickly shook his head and he shouted, "Stop," as he took potshots at the 'commander'. Before he could even reach the door of the holding section, the sliding metallic doors were shut close. He went up to the control pad that controlled them and found the door to be nonoperational now. They were completely jammed.

"Dammit," he shouted before turning around and attempting to stop the intruder in the Control Room.

* * *

"Who else was with you," questioned the older woman.

"Hailey was, well I guess is my adopted miralukian daughter you could say, I have been taking care of her since she was 14" Karus said.

She mouthed, 'ah', and took a moment to gather her surroundings as she was getting used to being free. After a quick break, she said, "So shall we get out of here."

"Not until we go after Hailey," and as if Hailey knew he'd say that, she quickly responded over the force, "_Leave this place, get Fera out of here. This was my choice and I can't explain it but I feel as if this needs to happen_."

"_Hailey, I am not leaving you behind. You're going to get yourself killed," he responded. _

"_Karus, please trust me. I am not a little girl anymore, I am a fully grown young adult. I need to take risks myself sometimes. Just please trust me on this. Ok?"_

Karus absolutely hated the idea of leaving her behind but knew she would just get up being upset and angry if he'd protest. He sighed and responded over the force with, "_Just be careful and try to make it back to the Black Pearl, I love you Hailey_."

"_I love you too dad, I love you too_."

* * *

She took a deep breath as he proceeded to take off her helmet and let her short brown hair fall around her head. Her near-blind eyes peered out the window as she felt an Imperial shuttle leave the vicinity of Dathomir's atmosphere. She didn't have her usual bandage around her eyes since it made her feel uncomfortable while she wore the helmet and decided to leave it in her room on the Black Pearl. She stood there for awhile before she felt another presence behind her in the opening of the entrance.

As Riser made his way to the Control room, he couldn't do anything about the escaping rebels but knew he could, at-most, bring in the other rebel in for interrogation. As he entered the control room, he saw that imperial officers were defeated by a female with short brown hair, staring outside the window of the control room that overlooked the entirety of the complex. She turned around and noticed her eyes sparkled a very foggy golden colour as if she was nearly blind. Riser Mack would be entirely lying to himself if he said that this woman wasn't incredibly beautiful just on her facial features and hair alone and couldn't imagine what it was like under her armour. He stared at her beauty before feeling a familiar feeling about her before he almost dropped his jaw and said, "The Miraluka?"

Almost like a cue, she withdrew her bo-rifle and unlatched the dual pong ends and activated it so that the sickly yellow energy coursed through and out the pongs. Riser responded to this by unsheathing his razor sharp vibrosword and getting into a defensive position. The two stood there for awhile before Riser took the first move and swung his vibrosword in an overhead downwards motion and it connected with the leftmost pong of the bo-rifle. He pressed into the bo-rifle which caused the miraluka to retract her bo-rifle a bit before flipping backwards and force propelling herself Riser with a connecting sideswipe that immediately followed through. He was completely caught off guard by this but quickly defended the quick attack with jumping backwards and pulling his sonic blaster, taking shots at the miraluka. The Miraluka deflected the shots back at the imperial agent with efficiency and charged him with her bo-rifle at her side before she took a swipe at his lower abdomen and managed to connect with his lower abdomen. Riser Mack had yellow, sickly electrical energy course throughout his body before dropping down in anguish. As the miraluka made her way to knock him out, he quickly shot his blaster at her which in turn, caused her to stumble in agony as the concentrated mass of sound caused her body to quickly crumble. She screamed and cried in pain and held her hand over where her heart as she screamed. Riser panicked at this and realized his blaster wasn't set to stun like he intended but before he could act, 3 Inquisitors enter the room alongside with the Grand Admiral.

"Ah, Head Imperial Agent Riser Mack, I see that you managed to capture the miralukian rebel we have identified as Hailey," said Thrawn, sounding rather pleased with this.

He stood at attention before the Grand Admiral and responded with, "Yes, I have captured this rebel but unfortunately," sighing before he took a deep breath and finishing with, "My mother and 'Commander Storms' have escaped."

Thrawn appreciated the agent's honestly and responded with, "I appreciate you telling me that you saw the prisoner was no doubt your mother, Riser Mack. Do not feel defeated. For this capture," as he looked at the anguish miraluka, "Is, without a doubt, a great victory."

Riser was slightly confused but asked, "What shall we do with her."

"We will do what we do with all rebels, which is interrogate them for a complete scale of information before their friends decide to come back for her. Which, I, no doubt to expect her to escape. Although I had gathered the feeling that it might be done by someone that seems at first the most unlikely, although in the end, when you have combined the pieces, it makes sense," he replied, being rather cryptic.

He was confused with his cryptic message but shook his head responded with, "I'll be back at my star destroyer if you need me Thrawn."

He chuckled and implied back to him, "Oh no, Riser, You aren't going back, you'll be there for the interrogation. Let it be a valuable lesson on efficient interrogation and torture tactics to gain the most complete and fulfilling set of information from your enemies."

Riser saw the unusual excitement in his words and this made him uncomfortable. Just what did Thrawn have in store for him?

Only time could tell.


	6. Chapter 6

Hailey awoke slowly to a room that was completely unfamiliar to her and blurred figures that were strangers to her eyes. She couldn't feel much through the force and it was as if someone or something, was restraining her from using it. Although her vision wasn't good either and being that she was a hybrid miraluka with instead of being completely blind, she was incredibly near sighted. Although a feeling in her wrists, ankles and the general overall bad atmosphere vibe that circled her, she knew that the place she was in wasn't the Black Pearl.

"Ah, the miraluka finally wakes up to us," a mellow voice said.

"Where am I," questioned the miraluka whilst pulling at her chains, trying to find someway to break free from her captors' imprisonment.

"Where you are is not important but what you know is. So I will make this as simple as I can: Give us the location of your rebel base or your friends will be hailed upon like a planetary bombard," explained the mellow voice.

The mysterious voice gave her a bone-chilling feeling throughout her body after he said that and she realized that the Empire had her. Who else would be threatening her to reveal where the rebel base would be? She held firm and kept silence as to not reveal nor say anything anymore.

"That's a pity. Do it," the mellow said.

Before she could think on what he meant, a jolt of a strong electrical energy coursed throughout her body. Her response to this was a loud, ear piercing scream before she bit her lip and stifled her voice so as to not give her torturer any satisfaction. She couldn't deny that the pain was absolutely excruciating. If her screaming wouldn't happen, then this individual was probably satisfied with her pained facial expressions that she gave as she tried to hide the pain.

After awhile, the electricity stopped coursing throughout her body and the mellow voice came back to her ringing ears, saying, "See what most captors don't know that when gaining information my protege is that you have to be quite patient. Your patience will reward you in the end. Not all battles are won through quick, swift decisions but calculated strikes."

What came after was another voice but this voice sounded much more familiar but the pain she was masking made it hard for her to assign a name to the familiar voice. While mentally multitasking, she felt another jolt of electricity course throughout her body and she had to stifle another ear-piercing scream as to not give into her captors. She had to admit, she was glad that the first thing Karus taught her was how to focus her aura into a shield of fortitude that could allow her to resist such barbaric tactics.

* * *

If there wasn't a better view of what the rebel known as Hailey looked like, then he didn't know how it could get better without it getting too personal. Short brown hair that draped past her ears along side with pale golden eyes that were usually covered, her body and build was incredibly slim but muscular for a woman of small stature with her arm muscles flexing against the restraints.

He had only learned her name when Thrawn had done his research on the young adult female and told him that her name is Hailey Polis and suspected that she could be part of the De la Franca Royal family but had no concrete evidence of this of course.

* * *

Her torture went on for hours with her being electrocuted multiple times alongside with several new lacerations across her body which ranged from deep to grazes across her pearly white skin. Riser expected for Thrawn to start getting irritated by the lack of results but he stood there, expressionless, as the Inquisitor known as Brother 1 continued the torture on her. It absolutely baffled the agent how he could hold such a straight face but I guess you don't become the Grand Admiral by being a "human-being" still. Sometimes he wondered if the Grand Admiral had emotions at all but knew that was a stupid question to ask. Couple more minutes passed before Thrawn sighed and said, "Bring out the Mask."

_Wait mask? What mask was Thrawn talking about?_ As if his answers were being answered, the Inquisitor left and then came back seconds later with a grey hood that had two eye holes that allowed the wearer to see out through the holes. The grey-skinned inquisitor walked up to Hailey and forcibly put the mask, well more like hood, over her face until it was tightly secured onto her head. Once it was tightly secured, Hailey screamed. Riser had no clue why she was screaming nor why once they had put the mask on, all fortitude to keep herself steeled had just been broken down like a house of cards.

"Grand Admiral. What does that mask do," inquired the younger agent.

"Ah Riser, that right there is a secret that you're not authorized to know yet because you still have so much to learn about this Empire and you're not ready for this secret yet. Let's just say that force-sensitive individuals are extremely susceptible to this mask."

Riser didn't need anymore information then that. Not understanding why, he felt the pure evil from the mask, this made him rather uneasy, augmented his fear for unknown reason of why this mask felt evil and it frightened him.

* * *

Back at the Black Pearl, tensions were still high because of the loss of Hailey. Fera Mack by this point had been intercepted by Captain Junos' rebellion fleet to be debriefed on the mission. Although out of everyone in the crew, Tania was extremely livid at Karus for leaving behind Hailey and though she didn't display a very open display of it, through the force Karus could tell she wanted to scream, kick, and yell at Karus. He had to commend her for trying to hold back her emotions and keep a level-head so that they may plan a strategic plan to rescue the miraluka.

* * *

_As Karus and Fera made their way out of the Dathomir system, a long silence filled the space shuttle they were occupied in. Karus felt through the force that Fera had an apologetic aura around her as if she wanted to say sorry about what happened to Hailey. _

"_It's ok Fera, it was her choice to do this but although I am not happy about it," responding to her aura. _

"_I know, I know. I just feel responsible for this. I saw my son also," Fera mumbled, "and I don't think he couldn't believe that I was alive." _

"_It's sad your son has been consumed by the Empires' ideals and customs. Unfortunately it seems as if he's being trained-"_

"_By Grand Admiral Thrawn, I know Karus," finishing his assumption for him, "and he's his 'protege'," saying while clearly mocking those last words. _

"_It's all my fault he turned out like that because if only I had known sooner about Onderon, maybe things could've been different," Fera added with clear sadness in her voice, "maybe my husband wouldn't be dead either…" _

"_Your husband sacrificed his life so that you could escape, if not for him, the rebels would have been destroyed. Well that's what Senator Organa tells me rather," Karus affirmed to her. _

_Fera embraced the young master and even though she was older than him, she certainly had some feelings for Karus but knew that he was a firm believer in the old ways of the Jedi. After all, it had been 7 years since her husband's death: Shouldn't had she moved on by now?_

_As the Imperial shuttle intercepted with the Black Pearl, they tried to contact the ship. _

"_BP, This is FR 1, We got the rebellion's VIP and requesting for docking."_

_Static filled the room before a voice broke the silence with, "FR 1 this is FR 5, we see you, celebration party will be there to greet you," enthusiastically the voice said back._

_Unbeknownst to the Freedom Ringers, they were missing a member._

While everyone was in their respected rooms, Ulysses called over the intercom and with his squealing voice said, "Everyone come to the cockpit, I have established a connection with Juno *snort* and she wants to speak to you all."

Everyone made their way towards the cockpit of the ship and were met with a hologram of Juno Eclipse. Once everyone settled into the Cockpit, they noticed that Fera Mack's hologram was also there and with that, the meeting commenced.

"Hello FR crew. I am Vice Admiral Fera Mack and joined with me is Captain Juno Eclipse, I know that we have met you all but I thought formalities were still in order. I have informed the other rebellion cells about your lost crew member and we've collectively came to the decision that we, unfortunately and sadly, can't risk the safety of this rebellion on one member."

Isslarok was the first one to respond and he was not happy with this decision, at all, "NO, We don't jusssst leave one of our own behind, I am not sssssory but I can't accept your decisssssion!"

Karus quickly calmed the trandoshan down before he went on a rampage and inquired, "Why has the rebellion made this decision Admiral?"

Karus knew Tania wanted to break the admiral's neck right there and then but told her to calm down through their connection.

"Unfortunately there were startling reports that were reported after you had escaped the prison with Fera a couple days ago," said the captain.

Tania couldn't contain her angrier any longer and angrily shouted, "WHAT DAMN REPORTS OF YOURS ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN OUR FRIEND DAMMIT!"

"Tania, Calm now! Captain Juno, please continue and tell us what has developed currently?"

"Thank you Karus," saying coldly, "We have confirmed reports that Grand Admiral Thrawn and the Seventh fleet is stationed there as of now alongside the Jedi Traitors known as Twin zabrak brothers Jul and Jol and are led by Sith Warrior Fashadda."

Karus's face when he heard the name of the Sith Warrior's name sent him into a wave of confusion and disbelief.

_Fashadda, his apprentice, was alive? How? He assumed that she died when trying to face Darth Vader?_

He had to know if this was his apprentice Fasha or some fake, "You mean ex-Jedi Padawan Fashadda? The Mon Calamarian?"

Fera sighed and gave him the words he never wanted to hear, "Yes, I am sorry to inform you about this Karus: It is, in-fact, your former Jedi Padawan. She has fallen to the dark side unfortunately."

He honestly had heard rumours of her that she still lived but he didn't want to believe them at all because they spoke ill about her, saying that she became a sith warrior for the Empire but it looked like ignorance wasn't an option no more. He had to make a decision he knew that the crew wouldn't like, especially Tania, "Ok, we'll get out of range of the Dathomir system for now. We'll stay a bit longer unless you have other orders for us currently?"

"As of now Karus, we currently don't have orders for you but we'll authorize permission for you to stay a couple more days near the Dathomir system but remember to stay out-of-range of their radars. We'll have something for your crew to do afterwards. Fera out," and with that, the holograms dissipated and Tania just stormed out of the cockpit back to her room. He could sense her anger and it was something to be alarmed over but before Karus could follow her, Ulysses spoke up and said, "I think it is best if we leave her to her own devices. It is a lot to take in *snort* for her Karus."

As much as he didn't want her to fall to the dark side, he knew that her heart was a force of good, she valued her friends and connections with the people she cared about. This was just a lesson for her to learn that sometimes you can't save everyone.

* * *

Hailey hung there in the torture room, alone and the only thing else that occupied her was her own thoughts. Although her thoughts were very few because of the amount of pain she was in. She had several lacerations across her body and legs alongside with a deep gouge on her right thigh, face flushed white with the amount of blood she lost during the torture, with one of her eyes beaten black and purple and with the sith mask that had majorly psychologically damaged her mind to a point where she just wanted to die. Despite all of the psychological and physical damage she had received, they didn't gain any information after a couple days. She could be happy about that at least: they hadn't broken her mind completely to a point where she'd spill. She would rather die with her secrets than jeopardize her friends safety.

She was alone with her thoughts and satisfactory success on saying "a big screw you" to Thrawn until she heard faint footsteps in the background. Hailey stifled her smirk and steeled herself for the oncoming torture or worse: execution. As the footsteps got louder and louder, she noticed that it was only one set of feet that were walking towards her cell and was surprised to see Riser walk into her cell without Thrawn. This confused her and waited to see why the agent was here alone.

He typed in a code on the jail terminal that remained on the inside of her cell and noticed that after he was done, the cameras in the room were turned off and what she would hear next would surprise her.

"I am sorry."

_Did she hear him correctly? Did he just apologize to her?_

Trying to find the air in her lungs to speak, "Wh….wh..what…," followed after with a coughing fit and she spat out blood.

"I am sorry for what they did to you. That mask. That mask felt evil…," the agent said.

"Wh...why..ar..are….yo...you….ap...ap...apolo...apologizing...," she managed to get out of her mouth.

"I always believed that the Empire was a fighting force of good. That you rebels were rebelling because you wanted the old ways back. You know, the old ways that I have been taught were so evil but if this is how the new way is going to be: torturing prisoners to unnecessarily extreme lengths, then I want nothing of it."

_Wait had Riser just been simply manipulated by the Empire? What other things did they teach him. _

Although now that hailey had a chance to collect her thoughts whilst trying to push back her physical pain and prejudice, Riser's aura didn't seem evil at all, just fanatically and passionate. It all made sense now why Riser hadn't kill Tania all those weeks ago: he had more than an opportune chance to end her life back on Felucia but he didn't, alongside with the time on Polis Massa with Isslarok and with the recent time being on Dathomir. He had multiple chances to end their lives, presently and past, to destroy them but he didn't. He always tried to arrest them before resorting to violence and even so, he wouldn't try to strike killing blows, only trying to stun them.

"Wh...What...ar...areee...yo...you… go..goin..goingg..t..to...do...now," questioned hailey.

"This," after he said that, he went back to the terminal, pressed a button which released her from her chains and fell on the ground but before she could, she found herself in the arms of the agent.

"You alright? Did hit the floor too hard," questioned the agent with a certain softness in his voice. This was completely to what everything that had encountered him with. The times they had met him in the battlefield he was cold, heartless and seem to have no compassion for them but now here: he was like a completely different person. Despite her excruciating pain that she was experiencing, she couldn't help but blush a little: This Riser was much more charming.

He handed her a few stimpacks and bandages and she proceeded to inject them into her veins and felt a rushing wave of warmth and healing throughout her body as the medicine went to work on her more excruciating wounds to dull their pain. All the while, she patched her lacerations with the bandages.

"Take sectors 2F and 4Y, avoid everything else except those and you'll end up in hanger 3. That hanger is my personal hanger and no-one should be there. Take my personal shuttle and head to these coordinates, they should be out of the range of the Empire's radars. Don't worry about the Empire asking questions when you leave, they already know "I am" supposed to leave soon."

"Wh..what a..bout...you," Hailey asked.

"I still need time, I want to find out what happened on Onderon first before I make a decision to leave the Empire but I'll do my best to remain a front and act like I am still with the Empire. Now go."

With that, Hailey exited the torture room but not before turning her head back to the agent and replying to his kindness with,

"Thank you."

"**HEY HEY HEY SKULLY THE STORY SEEMS LIKE RISER'S CHARACTER IS PROGRESSING TO FAST!" Do not fret readers, these upcoming 2 chapters ( after chapter 7, which will be a chapter revealing something about a certain character ) will be flashbacks into his last missions with the pesky Freedom Ringers. I have planned accordingly so get ready for these upcoming chapters! Also I know this chapter wasn't released on the scheduled day but I finished early so I thought I would release it today!**

**Also replying to reviews.**

**Redsword12 on Chapter 3:**

I totally get that Thrawn tolerates failure and understand he hates incompetence my good friend. I knew someone would point this out sooner or later and let me reply with this: There's a reason why I am making him like this for now. I always figured him for someone who would test authorities loyalty to the cause. After all, he doesn't want imcompetent people to have power. I don't want to reveal much on the story but I do hope you stay tuned into the story my friend!

**Regards, **

**~Sskully**


	7. Chapter 7

_Karus sat in his room in mediation as he tried to concentrate on the Dathomir systems' energy source: force auras to sith auras. He recognized an aura that seemed familiar to him and sighed before taking a deeper dive at this familiar aura. He felt as if the aura wasn't Hailey's but a much more older and familiar aura than hers and to which he realized that this must be Fasha's. He really didn't want to admit it but Fera and Juno were right: He felt the evil radiating off her aura and for the first time ever in a long time. He wept. _

_This was his padawan was his prized accomplishment to the order._

* * *

**Year 19 BBY**

Karus stood in the middle of the council room with all eyes piercing him and he could feel through the force their judging stares as they stared on at him. Most of these stares' were surprised and shocking because of how he managed to train the mon calamarian. This girl was seen by the jedi as someone who was very susceptible to the dark side and a likely threat against the Jedi council and the order but somehow, Karus managed to steer her from that path and make her into a great soon-to-be Knight. As the silence continued on, it was finally broken by the grand master, "Proved us wrong you have. Trained the Jedi known as Fashadda you have."

"I am most pleasantly surprised too Master Yoda," spoke a specific Tortuga with red and white headtails as she adjusted herself in her seat to get into a more comfortable position, "I must say that most of us here didn't think it was possible to train that pride youngling. I mean I never thought I would actually meet someone more prideful than Anakin to be honest."

"Don't let Anakin catch you saying that Shaak Ti," Ben Kenobi interjected.

The Tortuga known as Shaak Ti chuckled for awhile before continuing with, "Am I wrong?"

"Certainly not, he just would feel offended or would just be sarcastic about it, saying, 'I am sorry I just loveeee helping people and saving my friends' behinds' ".

The two Jedi were chuckling for awhile before Karus spoke up and said, "fellow Masters, may I ask for the real reason of this meeting with me? I surely know that it wasn't for just praising me or trying to compare who's the most prideful."

Even though Karus was much, much younger than the rest of his peers, he was certainly mature and wise for his age and the master knew this. That was one of the main reasons they had him made into a Master 4 years ago now in the first place at such a young age of 29 years old ( with of course recommendations from Mace Windu and Plo Koon ).

Shaaki Ti cleared her throat and continued, "Yes I apologize for the minor distraction. We have come to tell you that we want you and your apprentice on standby at the Jedi Temple today. This was a request from the chancellor himself," with those last words of hers being more of a whisper than anything but loud enough to clearly understand her. These were trying times because Mace Windu and Anakin Skywalker were sent by the Council to confront the Chancellor after some troubling evidence landed in their hands about him being a Sith. It only made sense that tensions were high because of this and the fact that so little Jedi were stationed at the temple and many of the Masters being on missions of their own. The only Master Jedis in the Temple as of now were Karus, Shaak Ti, Ben Kenobi, Yoda and Agen Kolar.

"Is that all for my orders my fellow Masters besides the question from earlier," questioned the other masters.

"All we have for you it is, stay here you must. Protect the temple you shall if the chancellor betrays us you must," the yodian said before finishing off with, "Conjure this meeting as finished I do. Dismissed you all shall be."

XXX

_As a 21 year old Karus walked into the council room of the masters that were collectively sitting there, they gave him unreadable expressions on what they had summoned him for. _

_After awhile, the first master to speak was none other than Mace Windu himself, "Knight Karus, we noticed how quickly you've matured over the past few years and I wanted to congratulate you on your field training and field missions alongside your fellow trainer himself: Master Plo Koon."_

_Karus looked over at Plo Koon who, despite his serious and unreadable facial expression he was giving him, could tell he was very proud of his student. Karus was an obedient, a bit reckless at certain points but otherwise mature young adult and the Masters took quick notice of this._

"_Thank you Master Windu. It's an honour to receive such praise from an esteemed master as yourself," responded to the master before asking, "but surely that's not why you've called me here for, is it? I'd take an educated guess and say that you have another reason why?"_

"_Great observation you had made young one," Yoda praised him for before saying, "Difficult time have we now hmm?"_

_The other jedi seem to either sigh or nod in agreeance to what Grand Master said before a zabrak jedi spoke up and said, "We've have collectively decided on a rather difficult decision deciding who your first padawan would be," and seemed to seem rather troubled with the last words he spoke._

_Karus almost didn't take notice of this but before he could question why he seemed troubled, a certain hologram of a Tortuga master spoke, "Master Kolar is referring to a rather troublesome apprentice who seems to be having trouble letting go of her emotions. While we don't want to raise Jedi to be robots who just follow every command, this apprentice has been rather troublesome. While her fighting spirit is none like we've seen before and certainly possesses a special aptitude for it, she fights too much with it with her emotions and not through the force as she should. We were considering to have her force forcibly taken from her but the grand master realized that you might be able to take under her wing." _

_This is when his old master decided to finally speak up, "So we have decided that you'd be the one to take her under." _

"_But only ready if you are young knight. Force taken we do not want but seems like out of options we are," Yoda finished off with. _

"_Certainly the masters couldn't think he could do this, right? I mean he only became a Knight a few years ago and now here they were asking him to whip in shape a troublesome new padawan," Karus thought to himself._

_As soon as he thought this, he realized that if he didn't, this padawan would have her force forcibly taken from them. He read in the achieves how painful of an experience that truly and knew it mostly left them suicidal._

_So deciding to be brave, he responded with, "I will take this request of yours and train this newly appointed padawan. What's her name?"_

_As if on cue, the doors opened and he turned around to see what he wasn't expecting at all. He was looking down at a young 13 year old mon calamari jedi! And she was blue!_

_The Mon calamari was wearing a light brown small preteen sized outer robe with her inner attire being white with a jedi belt wrapped around with a double-sided lightsaber attached to it._

_Ben sighed before saying, "Karus Marcellus V. Met Fashadda Monachal."_

_The younger girl evaluated him before she, playfully but very arrogantly, said, "You don't look like much at all! I can't believe the masters are tossing me to someone like you!"_

_This was going to be a long couple of years from here on out._

XXX

As Karus walked out of the Council room, he noticed his Padawan was eavesdropping the entire time. She was wearing her dark blue outer robe with a lighter baby blue inner robe with her black jedi belt wrapped around her inner robe to keep it in place and had a double-sided lightsaber attached to it.

He walked past her, shaking his head and soon Fasha caught up with her Master and the two began to speak.

He frowned at her and said, "You were eavesdropping the entire time weren't you?"

Her face tinged a slight pink before saying, "N-no I didn't I swear… only during the end at least… ," with the last couple of her words drifting into a mumble.

Karus sighed whilst rolling his eyes before responding to her answer with, "You need to learn not to do that Fasha because you're lucky I caught you doing it and not another master who would surely punish you extremely for that."

Fasha sighed back and said, "I know, I know Kar- I mean Master Karus, It's just a habit of mine because You know I hate not knowing everything that involves me especially"

The two continued walking and conversing throughout the grand hall of the temple that were lined with beautiful pillars and clean and flawless carpets. The architecture of the building was always to stunning to look at for the pair. They were specifically heading for the library of the walls which was a minute or two walk from the Council room of the Temple after ascending the stairs that lead out from the council room. They soon made their way over there and Fasha wasn't confused with why they were doing this. They were to be stationed her for alert purposes and also because Karus also wanted her to learn about the more in-depth history of their order. When they reached the library, Fasha turned and put her webbed hands on his shoulders to signal for him to stop and he followed through with it and stopped. She took a deep breath and said, "I just want to make you proud Master Karus."

He peered into the blue mon calamari's deep, bright yellow eyes and saw the sincerity in them. He took note of this and sighed while saying, "I understand Fasha but sometimes the council has to discuss things in private and unless you're involved or are meant to be informed of a decision, we are sworn to secrecy on the topics we discuss and this matter was something that didn't concern you. It is just how the Masters want it, I am sorry."

As they pushed open the giant white doors that led to the library, they were greeted with a momental-sized space with columns of bookshelves that lined the side walls of the library. At the front of each of the bookshelves, there was a bronze head statues on pedestals that symbolizes old great jedis' that have now passed but once served in the ancient order. The head ranged from different species with a head being a human to some more non human species like Rodians and Twi'leks with each head having a name plate under its respective statue to display their name, rank within order and the type of jedi they were seen as: A Sentinel, Warrior, or Consular. In the certain that separated the two eastern and western bookshelves was small individual light brown-like, light golden seating areas that included an oval-like table with chairs pushed into them alongside each seating area being largely separated from each other to not cause clutter. These seating areas also included a central black terminal on both sides of the seating are which allowed one person on one side to do research while the person facing them could do their own individual research on their side. The library area also had a conjoining second floor that held as much, if not, even more columns of bookshelves that seem to look like they held over millennials-worth of ancient history and custom of the Jedi. Finishing off the temple were the three beautiful windows that allowed natural light to spill into the libraries confines and with an open-door that lead to a balcony that overlooked the Jedi-gardens. Though in the far right corner, there was a certain door that only allowed Jedi Masters and the Head Chief of the library into a chamber that leads to the Holocron room and that is where Karus was heading to.

As Fasha went over to the ancient history of the jedi section of the library, he managed to sneak off to the certain door at the southern east most section of the bookshelves before accessing it and stepping into the secretive tunnel that led to the Holocron Vaults. It wasn't long until the Jedi reached the Vaults and stepped into the ancient room. Here is where all closely guarded secrets were being held and to add extra security to these ancient secrets, they were placed in these little embroidered gold and blue cubes called Jedi Holocrons which could only be opened by a Jedi.

Karus looked up and down, looking for a specific Holocron of the Jedis' and wasn't long until he found the two he was looking for: A holocron that hid the location of a secret, abandoned Jedi temple on the planet of Naboo and one that held 1 part of a long list of force-sensitive children within the galaxy. Karus didn't know why he took these 2 in particular but he felt something whilst he was walking to his chambers just as the meeting for Anakin and Mace Windu to confront the Chancellor for being a Sith and arresting him ended.

XXX

_As Karus walked back with his apprentice on hand from a meeting that just finished with the masters, Karus had a strange feeling in his heart and soul, a yearning almost. The strange feeling instantly turned into pain as he gasped in pain and collapsed on the ground. This all the while his apprentice was asking, "Master?! Are you alright?!"_

_Her soon cries for someone to help him were all but being drowned out by a sudden flash was shown to him. _

_Was it a Flashback? A memory? Could it be a glimpse into the future?_

_Karus didn't know but he remembered the flash showed him the Holocron room and a disembodied voice with an indistinguishable gender, whispering, "Return the secrets to the rightful owner and claim what will soon be taken." _

_Was it talking about the Holocrons?_

XXX

Karus certainly did feel a certain importance to these Holocrons whilst not understanding why he knew what the confines in these holocrons were before he pocketed them in his satchel he brought with him before the 2nd meeting before heading back out towards the secretive tunnel. As he did, he heard familiar screams in the distance and only distinguishing as Fasha's scream, he soon started racing through the tunnels and left the tunnel whilst quickly sealing it up and noticed as he peered out from the bookshelf covering the tunnel, clones were shooting their blasters at the jedi.

Wait WHY were they shooting at the jedi?

He noticed she was being overpowered by the several gunfire of the clones and stepped in to help her. The clones realized that he was there and said, "Kill The traitors to the Galactic Republic. They have tried assassination against our great Chancellor! Order 66 must be executed as issued by the Chancellor."

_So Anakin and Mace failed huh?, _Karus thought to himself before quickly igniting his yellow lightsaber and deflecting the incoming blaster fire from the 7 troopers which he recognized one of the troopers as his commandeering trooper: Commander Foxtails.

As he and Fasha quickly deflected the blaster fire back at the troopers, Karus forced his hand forward which caused Commander Foxtails to go flying into the northeastern bookshelf closest to him.

_He and Foxtails were amazing friends and comrades?! Why was he attacking and killing the Jedi? Because of this Order 66? I mean dammit! He knew that Turps was a grave error in his "programming", which gave the Jedi council authority to investigate this matter but little did they know: The entire army had these mind controlling tumours, _Karus thought this before seeing his comrade starting to get back up.

"Fashadda! Restrain him down," shouted Karus.

"Why! He tried to end my life dammit," screamed back the blue Mon Calamari Jedi.

"There's no damn time! Just trust me! Please," begged Karus.

Running over to commander, who was now trying to find his blaster, tackled him to the ground and restrain his arms above his head but that didn't stop the commander from wilding kicking his legs to land a hit hard enough to get the jedi off him.

* * *

Karus soon made his way to the restrained commander before putting his hand on his face and started to reach deep into his mind. This was a trick called Force erase, that he had learned by reading the ancient holocrons when he first became a master and was apparently used by the ancient Jedi order to forcibly remove corruption on non force-sensitive individuals who were highly susceptible to force manipulation and luckily, with him and Foxtails being old friends, he was susceptible to his force trick. As he reached deep inside his mind, passing the memories and thoughts of the trooper, he reached a certain section of his brain that reminded him of this code, it was a series of memories that were corrupted and manipulated in a way to seem like that Jedi committed atrocities that they never did. He soon grabbed hold of any of those memories and started to eradicate them effective immediately. It took awhile before Karus thought he destroyed these memories and double checked to make sure they were all erased. When he was happy with the result, he forced himself out of the clone commanders mind which brought him back into reality.

* * *

When he was back into reality, the commander started violently coughing and hacking because of what happened to him. It continued for awhile before the clone stared up at him and asked, "Karus I said we were friends but I never said we were this close," before chuckling and noticing that Fashadda was actually the one holding him down and grew embarrassed quickly at the compromising position he was in with her.

Karus soon asked, "Do you remember why you are here Fox?"

Foxtails looked around and gave a confused shock to why he was in the damn jedi library. I mean this was property of the order and only people who were given permission or were apart of the Jedi Order were allowed inside. He shook his head and sighed, "No sir, I don't understand why I am her-," before noticing his men dead on the floor and finishing off with, "Or why my men are dead!"

Somehow the tricked that he learned from the ancient holocron actually worked! That was surprising to Karus still despite how happy he was to have his good friend back to him and not trying to actively murder him.

"You're men turned on us Foxtails, they are also reason the Jedi who were just minding their business here are dead too," responding to the commander's question.

He then remembered how his memory was suddenly flooded with bad memories and crimes that the Jedi did and was about to kill Karus for it but at the same time he realized that he didn't remember any of these happening the way they predicted. For instance: The space battle over Kashyyyk to stop the separatists from stealing a shipment of wookie slaves from the Republic controlled planet. The way he actually remember it was how Karus invaded the Banking Clan trade ship with his 42nd Squadron of specially trained jet-pack troopers to intercept the ship and free the wookie prisoners. He, now, vividly remembered him saving the Wookies and taking a shot but the bad memory he received was showed Karus mass slaughtering the Wookie prisoners before destroying the ship entirely and that didn't make any sense to the clone.

"Karu-, I mean General. I don't understand why I felt that why… It felt as some sort of switch was turned on and I suddenly thought of you as enemies along with all these bad dreams, sir," the clone commander grimaced.

"It's ok," before nodding towards Fasha to release the commander and she hesitated for a second but then let go of Foxtails. Fox stood up from the he was restrained and stretched out his muscles before taking off his helmet and walking over to his men and deeply sighing.

_These were some of my best too…, _he mumbled.

He looked like any other clone except he was wearing Arc trooper armour that was customly painted orange and white as he requested it to be so and alongside with his hair being into a small ponytail.

"General, we have to leave this place now because there are going to be more rogue clones charging here and killing more jedi as they go along I suspect," said Foxtails.

"I agree with that Fox, let's head towards the balcony and-," and was cut out as they heard someone walk into the library but the two jedi noticed the evil aura that was radiating from it. Turning around to face the exit/entrance to the library and they saw someone they didn't think would betray the order: Anakin Skywalker except there was pure evil and anger radiating from him.

"Anakin? No if Mace isn't here then… shit…" sighed Karus.

The rogue jedi didn't say anything as he ignited his lightsaber and charged the group.

The human and mon calamarian jedi quickly ignited their sabers before preparing for the incoming attack. Karus's saber soon clashed with Anakin's as he pressed into his saber to gain an edge in the fight and tire the older man out. Knowing he couldn't overcome Anakin's attack, he force stepped back upwards onto the balcony and Foxtails quickly ran westwards, taking potshots at the rogue jedi whilst he went to the stairs that led to the balcony. Of course Anakin blocked his attacks with ease and was about to force jump upwards to follow the Master but found himself soon stopped by a Mon calamarian Jedi with her purple double-sided lightsaber in front of him.

If she wanted to die also then he had no problem answering this foolish woman's request for a battle and found himself blade to blade with the water-breathing woman.

They clashed sabers left, right and center as they connected each other's attack with a defense maneuver of their own. Fasha did a backflip before she also got onto the same platform that her Master was on. Anakin quickly joined them as he connected his force jump with a downwards strike onto Karus and connected, once again, sabers with him. This time he pressed harder and harder, using his anger to fuel his desire to end this pitiful old man in his eyes. The darkside coursed through his body like an overpowering force now and Anakin loved it. If this was the power he could use to protect Padme from danger then he was damn well alright with using it.

As the younger jedi pulled out from the intense connecting of blades, he quickly brought his blade back into the older man's blade and force pushed him backwards which caused him to stumble back a bit. This gave him the opening he needed and force propelled himself forward before slicing his lightsaber upwards to cut open his stomach. Karus tried to block the attack but was too late before he paid the ultimate price for being too late.

Fasha watched as Karus's offhand was sliced clean off which caused the old man to reconcile back onto his knees before holding onto his knees, clutching where his left hand should be. This brought satisfaction to Anakin knowing this traitor was going to die and proceeded to look down at him as swing his lightsaber sideways to cut off Karus's head but noticed that his attack stop by that vile purple lightsaber. He looked up and saw the pure hatred on this woman's face and this caused him to plaster a wicked smile and knew this was going to be a more interesting fight to be in.

As Anakin and Fashadda clashed blades, they found themselves not being able to overpower one another as they both now they were fighting with extreme hatred but for different reasons: Anakin thought of the Jedi as traitors of the Republic and needed to put down every single one in existence and Fasha thought that anyone who harmed her master, well they deserve to die a slow and painful death. As they continued to clash sabers in an extremely intense battle, Fasha was getting sick of this before she force pushed Anakin off the balcony and followed after him. As they fell she propelled herself forward and caught blades before they landed onto the lower floor and tried to overcome the other through pure brute force.

"Fasha! We need to go NOW," yelled Master Karus before clenching his teeth at the sheer pain where his left hand should be.

"Master! Leave! I'll defeat this vile man," yelled back but something was different to Karus when he heard it: It was an emotion of pure and undying hatred towards Anakin.

"Don't fight with anger and hatred Fasha! I understand you care about me but the way you're fighting will lead you down a dark path," he yelled back.

Before he could hear his padawan's next words, he noticed the sound of a speeder in the back before turning around to see Grand Jedi Master Yoda in a speeder with Senator Bail Organa.

"Go we must now Karus, into exile that is. Dark times for the jedi it is, the only choice now we have" spoke the wise master.

"Leave me Master," she yelled before going into their connection and saying, _I'll be fine, I promise._

Wanting to fight alongside his Padawan, he also he knew that he was in no position to fight the strong rogue jedi. He deeply sighed before he made his way to the speeder with Foxtails and climbed in. As the speeder sped off he heard one last voice through his head.

"I love you Master, See you soon."

**Before you bash me for using something that isn't exactly canon in the star wars universe, I would like to say that I never said this was going to be canon or that I wouldn't be using my own creations. I understand Force erase isn't from the universe but I thought it would play a pivotal changing point in this chapter and maybe future chapters :]. **

**~Best regards,**

**Sskully**


	8. Chapter 8

**7 BBY**

As the Black Pearl neared the junkyard planet known as Lotho Minor, Tania peered over the console to get a better view of all the junk circulating around the planet. It was truly a disgusting sight for the young twi'lek jedi as she scoffed at the sight. She looked back at the members of the Freedom Ringers: Hailey on the co-pilot seat, Karus sitting behind her with a clone piloting the spaceship alongside with Tania being behind the clone pilot. As they got nearer and nearer to the atmosphere of the junkyard planet, a voice said, "Nearing the checkpoint Gen-, I mean Karus."

Karus looked at the pilot and responded to him, "Foxtails, I almost forgot how good of a pilot you were with how much I have been doing it lately."

"Well sir, My brothers and I were bred on Kamino specifically for piloting and using jetpacks, kind of runs in the family as they say," replying whilst chuckling.

The two chuckled over this and before they knew it, they had landed on the checkpoint that Fulcrum informed them of.

"Lets just replay the message so we know where we are going," mumbled the clone before he started to now replayed the message.

"_FR Cell, This is Fulcrum. When you reach the checkpoint, you'll receive a location on your holomaps on where to find the merchandise to help our cause. Fulcrum Out."_

After the second half of the message played again, he got an indicator inside his helmet that displayed a holomap and a red dot, some clicks out, that showed the location of the so-called merchandise that Fulcrum was talking about.

"Ok, I got the location of the merchandise on my helmet's local holomap of the area around here and I should be able to lead us out of here," said Foxtails.

"Now we just need to decide who goes with you Foxtails and who stays here at the ship," replied Karus

"I want to go Karus," said the miraluka woman.

"Are you sure dear," questioned Karus before continuing with, "This planet might bring back some bad memories of where you came from."

"Yes, I have a feeling, can not explain," said Hailey.

Karus was always wary about the feelings that Hailey felt because it would usually be the force trying to tell her something or lead her to somewhere. It wasn't like it was bad or anything because sometimes it would reveal a piece of Hailey's true family but so-far anything with Hailey's real family was completely foreign to her.

"Well if she is going, then I am too Karus," proclaimed the young Twi'lek jedi.

"I don't think so Tania, you still have so much to learn on self-restraint still and I don't think you're ready just yet," an unknown voice said behind them.

She turned around to see Master Luminara Unduli standing behind here in her typically black robes and headdress along with her brass-coloured armbands and a sash, the latter two embossed with ornate symbols. She also had on her jedi belt was her trademark one-blade green lightsaber.

"Master Unduli, I don't see why I can't go with her. I understand you don't think I am ready but let me prove to you that I am with this mission," replied back the young twi'lek.

Karus gave Luminara a longing, serious look before she sighed and finally said, "Fine I understand. You need an opportunity to prove you're ready. Just remember to stay calm and collected Tania, don't freak out if something goes wrong and please, don't fall into temptation."

"I won't. I promise Master Unduli," responding back to the Master Jedi.

As if on cue, Foxtails spoke up and said, "We are here."

* * *

As Foxtails, Tania, and Hailey exited the spaceship, they had on special oxygen masks and suits that allowed them to breathe the planet's rather toxic air and withstand the planet's intoxicating atmosphere, although the masks, unfortunately, didn't mask the absolute putrid stench of oil, decay, and whatever horrid thing that could stench up the planet so badly. Lotho Minor had a surface covered with enormous mountains of trash piled over countless generations ranging from decaying corpses of unknown individuals, different models of trashed, old astromech droids, old protocol droids, assassins droids, and much more. The gutted and rotting hulls of ancient starships poked through the more recent garbage, lending its landscape the eerie feel of an industrial graveyard. Foul-smelling fog limited visibility, while there were huge pools of toxic sludge that had periodic bursts of deadly acid rain that made the hot, caustic planet one of the most deadliest in the galaxy to explore without proper equipment.

"God, this place is worse than anything I have experienced in my life," Tania complained.

They continued to walk ahead while Foxtails was leading the group. They walked through trash piled all the way up to their ankles and they thanked the force that they had these suits because they could feel the acidic water cover their ankles and feet as they stiffed through the trash to reach their destination. They soon reached a clearing in the trash that was cleared in the shape of an oval with a Storm IV Twin-pod cloud car not far from them and a pile of trash a few meters away from the broken air speeder.

Hailey soon felt a weird feeling or connection to the car and found herself wandering to the old, destroyed speeder. She closed her eyes to feel in the force where the feeling was leading her to and a small circle item was highlighted in yellow in what seemed to be a small compartment drawer inside one of the pods. She walked over to the over pod that she wasn't near and reached her hand into a compartment that was jammed open and pulled out a small golden chain and amulet. She withdrew her bandages that blinded her, held the amulet close to her squinting eyes, went to inspected the amulet to see if there was anything special about it and found it to actually be a locket with a dirty but recognizable picture inside. The picture displayed a man and woman smiling with them locking hands and with the woman holding a small wrapped girl infant in her other arm close to her chest. The man was dressed in a fancy red leathery vest with a long gray cape attached to it by gray straps over the shoulders that pinned itself by golden pins alongside a brown suit jacket and pants that were cuffed because of his high black boots. His fancy vest was held together with the rest of his outfit, with the exception of the cape, pants and boots, with a black belt with a gold medallion in the middle. He had clean full, black combed over hair with piercing golden eyes. The woman was different in that she was incredibly pale, basically ghost like, and was dressed in an extravagant red dress with symbols on the lower half of it and the sleeves. She has also fancy golden chains hanging from her neck and golden earrings from her ears. Her outfit was finished off with a beautiful red headdress that covered her eyes for some reason and it reminded of herself.

She was mesmerized by how similar she looked to the two individuals in the picture and that is when she thought to herself: Could these two people be my real parents and if so, how long was this picture taken.

As if someone else was thinking the same thing, Tania was looking over her shoulder and said, "Hey Hails, those people look like you somewhat."

Hailey nodded in agreeance and looked up at the red twi'lek jedi almost giving her a look on what she should do with it.

"I think you should put it in your room and every time we visit a more neutral planet or planet in general, you should wear it to see if it catches the eye of anyone specific," she responded to her look that she gave her whilst giving her a smirk and patting her on her shoulder before heading back over to Foxtails.

"Foxtails, how far until we get to the merchandise? We've been walking through trash and acidic rain for hours," Tania questioned.

"Don't worry Tania we shouldn't be too fa-,"he said as he was soon interrupted by blaster fire that hailed from nowhere. The two quickly ducked into the trash pile a few meters away from the Storm IV Twin-pod cloud car where Hailey took cover.

"Kill the Rebels," yelled an unknown voice. Foxtails noticed that it sounded like a Rodian and took a quick peek. He saw a few meters in front of them were 3 Rodian scavengers that armoured themselves in junk-like armour and were wielding Junk blasters along with one of the rodians looking much more heavily armoured than the rest with an E-WEB turret machine gun in his hands.

They were soon pinned down by blaster fire from the scavengers and only Foxtails and Hailey could find an opening to take a few potshots at the Rodians but the up-close and personal melee wielder couldn't find an opening to jump in. They had to make a plan quick or otherwise the Rodians would slowly advance upon their position and overpower them and they couldn't allow that.

Tania soon connected with Hailey over the force and even though they couldn't send embrace or warn force waves to each other's force aura, they could, of course, still talk over the force.

_Hailey, I need you to be ready to do something really quick and quietly, _said the red twi'lek over the force.

_What is it Tania?, _replied the blind woman.

_I am going to draw my lightsaber and deflect as many shots as I can. When I do this, you need to get your bo-rifle ready and charge them, _Tania said over the force.

Hailey looked at Tania and nodded her head in agreeance to the plan.

As soon as she did this, Tania withdrew her lightsaber and ignited the white saber as it hummed to life. The Rodians took quick notice of this before, presumably, the leader shouted, "Kill the Jedi," and proceeded to change their target to the red twi'lek jedi. Tania quickly took to the defensive and quickly defended off 2 rodians blaster fire and the Heavy rodian was charging his E-WEB turret gun up again . Tania saw this and quickly grew worried before Hailey popped her head and withdrew her bo-rifle with the sickly yellow pongs being extended and radiating a sickly, yellow electrical current. She quickly force propelled herself forward at the attackers and connected an overhead strike on one of the nearest rodians which was one of the blaster rifle rodians. The sickly electrical pong struck him in the head and electrocuted him for a couple of seconds before Hailey withdrew her bo-rifle and struck him with a sideswipe and knocked the wind out of him. The Leader noticed this and dropped his E-WEB turret and threw a punch at Hailey's face and it connected. The punch caused her to stumble back quite a bit and before she could register the pain, she felt another punch connected with her stomach which caused her to fall back. The leader then pulled out a sharp, 12 inch blade and brought it down on where her heart is but before the knife could connect with her skin, she managed to catch his wrists mid-air and about centimeters away from her actually heart. From here it was a fight of, "who had better raw physical strength," and it was clear that Hailey was losing that fight, badly.

Once Tania was done finishing off the last grunt rodian, she saw how much trouble Hailey was truly in. She ran over to her and proceeded to stab her lightsaber downwards on the leader's backplate and Hailey quickly saw the rodian jolt in shock as they saw the white lightsaber that now pierced through the rodian's chest armour and was now mere centimeters from having Hailey become collateral damage. He quickly slumped over onto her and she proceeded to push the rodian's corpse off her and panted rapidly.

"You doing alright Hails," Tania said concerningly as she offered her the miraluka her hand to pick her up.

As Hailey grabbed her hand and lifted herself up, she said, "Yeah, I am good."

"You two alright there," questioned the clone as he ran up to them.

"Yea Foxtails we're alright," replied the twi'lek.

Hailey sat down on a piece of junk to catch her breath and take one last look at the amulet she had found.

_Could these be her parents? I mean she certainly saw some resemblance from the man and woman in here. For instance: the woman's headdress was that of a miraluka which she indicated she was a miraluka and her man had the same golden eyes as her with the two might being a mixture of hair colours. She was unsure. _

She was interrupted by a clone who noticed the similarities between her and the people in the amulet too and said, "Hey, if we ever have time, we'll find them. Unfortunately we have to keep moving."

She nodded her head and got up from where she was sitting and followed the clone.

It wasn't long until they reached two big metallic boxes that looked like some sort of generator.

"Here they are, the two old separatist planetary shield generators. These puppies can withstand even the strongest blast from a planetary bombardment," said Foxtails.

"Yes, Deflector shield generators, Separatist model AN-12's. They quite advanced from a traitorous group like yourselves to be using," a disembodied voice sounded around them. The group looked around to see where the voice came from and noticed an unknown individual in a white chemical hazard standing high on top of a junkpile. They noticed that on his white hazard suit, unlike their yellow ones, was the symbol of the Empire.

"What do you want Imperial?! Give a good reason to not cut you down where you stand right now," snarled the red twi'lek.

The imperial laughed and said, "try me jedi traitor."

Tania ignited her lightsaber and proceeded to force propel herself up to the imperial before coming down in an overhead strike. Her blade was near centimeters away from the imperial's head before her hands were stopped by an unknown force. This caught her completely by surprise as a black skulled stormtrooper took her hands and another invisible force punched her clear off the pile which caused her to fall backwards onto her back. She closed her eyes in pain as her back made hard contact with the ground and when she squinted her eyes open, she saw 4 black skulled stormtroopers standing right next to the imperial.

"Who… the hell… are you," said Tania, shouting the last two words.

"Oh jedi dear, you can't even recognize me by my voice can you? I know the clone can for sure," the imperial responded.

Tania looked at Foxtails and he answered her questioning look and said, "It's Riser Mack. Remember him back on Mustafar?"

The moment Foxtails had said, "Riser Mack," she grew angry because she knew of what he's done and has faced him in close combat a few times but were always interrupted by something.

"Riser…," grumbled the red twi'lek.

"Now you remember me," he said sarcastically before noticing there was a third member that was completely unknown to him and questioned, "and who might you be?"

The mysterious member remained quiet.

"FR 2, don't respond to him," said Foxtails.

The mysterious member complied and didn't saw and word to answer him on who they were. The agent grew tired of this and just got straight to the point, "Surrender now Rebels and I promise your trial will go swiftly and justly."

"We all know that wouldn't happen. Do it FR 1," said Foxtails.

XXX

_They were in lightspeed as the Black Pearl travelled to the planet of Lotho Minor. In Karus's room is where him and Foxtails were establishing a failsafe plan in case the Empire sent something or someone they had no prior knowledge to. _

"_So what's the failsafe General," questioned the clone_

"_It's Karus, Foxtails, but if we encounter anything on Lotho Minor that seems dangerous and unknown to us, I'll be in the Spectre on standby just in case. You got that Fox?"_

_The clone shook his head and replied with, "Got it Karus." _

XXX

Right when he said, "do it," a small blip in the sky started to appear out of the sky. The group looked to the east as the blip grew closer and closer until light cannon blaster fire rained on the group. The blaster fire hit in between the group and Foxtail yelled, "Run!"

"What about the generators FR 5," Tania responded to Foxtails with a shout of her own.

"Leave them, we can't risk FR 2 being discovered nor can we take on them right now because that stealth technology is nothing like I've seen and I don't want to find out now what else they can do," said foxtails

Tania groaned loudly before shouting over the blaster fire, "C'mon FR 2!"

Hailey stood there standing at the unfamiliar new face but she felt something off about him. She didn't know what this feeling was but she decided to push it back for now and ran away from the Agent.

* * *

Riser mack looked onto the group running away and thought it wasn't worth the effort to go after they right now and proceeded to head back towards his TIE Interceptor. One of the dark troopers went up to him and asked, "Sir, what do we do now?"

"We head back to my Star Destroyer. There is no need to chase these rebels now. We'll have a better chance of getting them another time soldier, I promise," responding to the soldier's question.

That's when Riser got an incoming transmission from Grand Admiral Thrawn and decided to respond to it.

"Head Imperial Agent Riser Mack, How did your mission go?"

"Grand Admiral Thrawn, I decided to let the Rebels escape this time as I saw no worth in capturing these Rebels who merely weren't a threat as of now," the agent replied.

"Ah, good. I wouldn't want you wasting this Empires' resources for a mere problem. Besides the Jedi traitor known as Karus, who else is with them?"

"I report that there's… a third jedi, red twi'lek, but it seems that she is only a knight," mumbled the agent.

"So not only do we have Jedi Masters' Karus Marcellus and Luminara Unduli but we have a third jedi that escaped," sighing annoyingly but responding calmly with, "If the Emperor would've had me in charge of the hunt for these pesky jedi traitors, we wouldn't be having this problem."

"Of course Grand Admiral, is that all you wanted," inquired the agent.

"For now. I except a full mission debrief of the current rebellion status and the potential of using Lotho Minor when you come back to your Star Destroyer, I'll be there," responding before his hologram faded away.

The agent sighed and proceeded to board his TIE Interceptor and proceed his way back towards his Star Destroyer.

* * *

Back on the Black Pearl, the group was gathered in the cockpit of the ship with everyone in their respective seat.

"What happened down there and why didn't you return with the generators," questioned the female master.

"We encounter that damned imperial agent again and he had some sort of stealth troopers with him," responded the red twi'lek

"Wait, a stealth trooper," inquired karus before confirming his suspicious with, did they have skulls for helmets?"

"Yes, why do you asked this Karus," questioned the twi'lek.

"I fear I know what these specific troopers are then," sighed the male jedi master.

Before Karus could respond, Foxtails spoke before him, "They're called Terror Troopers," he set the Black Pearl in standby mode before turning his chair to finish his sentence, "They were a project by chance-, well Emperor Palpatine I guess we call him now, to see how clones worked with stealth technology on armour but I am guessing that was a project he could commission when his plan to destroy the Republic worked."

The group sighed after the clone was done speaking: They knew that these suckers were going to be trouble in the future.

**I am so sorry for this late update on the story. Don't worry, I didn't lose inspiration for this story. I just was really sick these past two weeks and was lucky to have Chapter 7 done earlier than I anticipated. I don't know if another chapter is coming out next week but if there isn't, just know that means you'll be getting a double update the following week. Anyways I really hope you appreciate today's late chapter and again I apologize for the lateness of today's chapter. **

**Anyways, Best Regards**

**~Skully**


	9. Chapter 9

**Year 8 BBY**

As the Black Pearl entered into the system of the volcanic planet of Mustafar of the Atravis sector of the Outer Rim Territories, there were two jedis in a bedroom who were in a meditation position. The two jedis were none other than Jedi Master Luminara Unduli and Jedi Knight Tania Windwalker.

"Master, please inform me again why we are doing this again," questioned the twi'lek knight.

"Tania you never learned how to completely control your emotions as well as the other knights of your time," responded the master while her eyes were still closed.

"So you're saying I still need to learn how to control my outbursts," questioned again the twi'lek knight.

"Precisely," before opening her eyes to face the red twi'lek Jedi knight, "Now Tania, tell me again why you have outbursts when faced with immediate or future danger."

The knight hesitated to say anything but then sighed and decided to respond to the master's question, "It's because… because I'm… afraid."

"Why are you afraid Tania? For your friends? Afraid of failure, which one," inquired the master.

Now Tania couldn't lie and just pick one because it actuality: It was all three.

"It's.. It's all three Master," mumbled the knight.

The master of course knew this but wanted to hear it from the twi'lek herself. She scooted a little close to the twi'lek and said, "Tania look in my eyes and hear my words carefully."

Tania slowly opened her eyes and noticed that her eyes were near centimeters away from hers as she said, "I understand you're afraid of losing your friends. Times now are more troublesome than ever with our order being nearly annihilated by Palpatine, Order 66 and Vader's Inquisitors. This is the ultimate test of loyalty to not only our friends and fellow jedi but I feel it's a test to see how we jedi, face a crisis on a grandeur scale. While it's easy to submit to the dark side and join the Empire as some of our fellow masters and knights did, it's a bigger commitment to still fight for the people and for what's right. Remember that this war is a war where we're on the side of the people. I understand the Clone Wars and that it mentally scarred you but it did that for everyone when our own Chancellor turned out to be a Sith Lord," she sighed and put her left hand on Tania's right shoulder and continued with, "Just remember who and what you're fighting for. The force will always be there to protect you."

The master was speaking absolute truth and Tania knew this. She knew that she couldn't have these outbursts or it could endanger her friends but most importantly, it could stray her mind from the light side of the force. This is why she wished Master Unduli was her tutor. While Master Plo-koon was a good master, Luminara Unduli just always seemed to understand where she was coming from all the time and she would always be grateful for that.

Unduli finished her monologue with, "Tania, just remember while your under duress, your friends lives are on the line and one wrong move could cost me, you or your friend's lives."

Tania sighed and said, "I understand Master Unduli. I see the wisdom in what you are saying."

"Good," responded the Mirialan female

Tania got up, yawning whilst saying, " I am going to go to bed now. Goodnight master"

The master smirked and replied with, "Goodnight Tania. Rest up because we have a big day tomorrow."

The Jedi knight gave one last bow to the Master before heading off to her room and going to bed.

* * *

The Black Pearl circulated around the system of Mustafar as the crew of Freedom Ringers woke up and were getting ready for the mission today. They had heard rumours of a mysterious infantry super weapon was being manufactured on Mustafar by the Black Sun and they were planning to discuss trade with the Empire.

* * *

Inside the cockpit of the Black Pearl was the Freedom Ringers: Jedi Masters Karus and Luminara, Jedi Knight Tania, Hailey and Foxtails. Sitting in their respective seats, the discussion on how to go forward with this plan started.

"So the rumours have talked about this "superweapon" that's being produced by the Black sun but we are unsure completely what it does. All we know that it's not a vehicle or ship but a hand-held rifle blaster," Karus stated.

"So what do you suggest we do Karus," questioned the clone commander.

Karus thought for awhile before he finally spoke up again and said, "While I would usually say we come announced with rumours likes these, I think we don't want unwanted attention from the Black sun or the Empire so I would say a full on confrontation is out of the books."

"So what you suggest is that we sneak into the complex," questioned the Mirialan master.

"Precisely but we don't do it with the Black Pearl, we use the Spectre since it has its own small stealth shield system in it and is much smaller than the Pearl," replying back to the other Master.

"That's a good plan but how do we get past the radars that the Black Sun has," said the questioning clone.

"The stealth shield should be able to mask any trace of a ship's signal coming into their radars if we're lucky," replied Karus.

Finally speaking up, Hailey said quietly, "well, who goes?"

"Good question Hailey, replied the red twi'lek before continuing with, "who does go Karus?"

Karus, again, thought for awhile before speaking up, "I think Foxtails, being that he has experience and Master Unduli should go on this mission."

Tania wanted to object but she remembered what the Master said last night and instead interjected with, "I think that's a good plan."

Master Unduli knew Tania wanted to object and sent an appraisal aura to Tania's aura for holding back there.

"Well that is the team for this mission. Master Unduli and Foxtails will lead this mission and get as much information as they can on the apparent "superweapon" being produced by the Black Sun," Karus said before finishing up with, "Foxtails and Luminara, get ready and everyone else, back to your stations."

* * *

As the Spectre entered into the atmosphere of the volcanic planet, they had their signature and shuttle cloaked under invisibility as to not be seen by the radars. As they approached closer and closer to the drop-off point, they prepped themselves for the mission ahead.

"So if you don't mind Master jedi, but how long exactly have you've known Karus, my general?" inquired the Clone commander.

That question caught the Mirialan Master by surprise in all honesty. No one had ever asked such a weird question like that and she would especially not expect it from the clone. She took awhile to figure out a satisfactory answer for the clone and proceeded to say, "Well Foxtails, that certainly is an interesting question. To know how long I've known Karus, you must understand how long I've been in the Order."

"Well how long have you both served," questioned Foxtails.

"Well you could say that we both entered the Jedi Order around the same time in all honesty. We didn't really get to know each other until we actually became knights in the order and of course with Karus being slightly older than me, he was a Master before I was," the Mirialan master replied.

"Interesting. One more question before we trek off if you don't mind of course," said the clone commander.

"Ask away Foxtails," she said nonchalantly.

"Who was he to you? I know Jedis aren't supposed to have attachment but you certainly hold his words in high regard. I mean just the way you go along with his plans sometimes, like this one, without a second thought," said Foxtails

She was caught even more off guard by this question than the first one he had asked.

"_Had she seriously done this while being with him. I mean it was no debate why the Masters had picked him to be one after he trained the very troublesome Padawan known as Fashadda but he was also incredibly wise and knowledgeable in many fields of history and the force," _the mirialan jedi thought to herself, "_If she had to be completely honest with herself, he was smarter than most at his job. _

Luminara knew she couldn't think of a single reason why she followed him so freely except one.

"I follow his orders without a second thought because Karus, like Grand Master Yoda, was extremely wise and an expert with the force. If anyone can return the Jedi order to what it was, it would be him or Yoda and we don't know where the Grand Master even exiled himself, not even Karus knows," responded Luminara.

Satisfied with the answer that the Master jedi had given him, he returned back to the Spectre's main controls before saying, "Reaching the checkpoint, when we get there, we will be walking the rest of the way."

Luminara nodded her head to the clone to tell him that understood and mentally prepped her mind for the mission.

* * *

Sneaking around the complex was harder than the pair had originally thought it to be: They really didn't want anyone getting inside who wasn't supposed to be inside and they almost got caught several times because of this. The room they were in now was a large storage hangar that had rows of crates lining the sides of the hangar that stacked meters upon meters high. In the middle of the room was a couple of spread out tables aligned horizontal from each other and had several blaster parts, energy cores, matrix cylinders, and much more. Although on the middle table they saw was a glass box that contained a 36 inch by 2 inch huge blaster cannon. The barrel was around 4 inches in its radius and its material being that of titanium steel. The barrel end led into a sleek black titanium trigger guard and body with the stock being a see-through frame made with the same material as the rest of the gun.

"Wow look at this beauty," whispered Foxtails.

"What do you think it shoots because I've only seen the Magnaguards only ever wield these types of proton-based looking weapons?" inquired the Mirialan jedi.

Foxtails chuckled quietly to himself as he shook his head and whispered, "well you answered your own question this Master jedi."

Before the Master Luminara could say anything, she felt an evil force approaching them and whispered, "Hide!"

The clone commander didn't ask why and just followed her orders as they dove behind a set of boxes about a couple of meters away from the glass box.

A few minutes later, a green skinned, yellow eyed falleen male walked into the room with a slightly shorter but still tall, human. The caucasian human has a full head of black slicked over to the left side of his head hair and was wearing a black imperial officer's outfit. He had icy blue eyes and soft pale lips. The falleen wore golden bracers on his arms and a set of light beige and tan boots. His uniform almost resembled that of a samurai with a black belt with a golden symbol acting as its locking mechanism to tie off the outfit. His hair was slicked back into long black ponytail and had rather light facial hair. Luminara had heard of this man from rumours that were spread around the planets: This man was the Leader of the Black Sun, Ziton Moj.

Alongside Ziton Moj was a bronze Trandoshan with his IQA-11 Blaster Sniper Rifle slinged over his back. He was dressed in old bounty hunter's apparel, which resembled a black shirt with medium-long sleeves and had a white tactical over-vest that had terminal detonators attached to them and an extra pistol. He also had the same colored cargo pants that cuffed at his ankles with age that riddled his red eyes and face. Next to the trandoshan was a HK-77 orange coloured assassin droid that wielded a E-11D blaster rifle.

As the four made their way towards the glass box, the green falleen spoke first, "As you see here my imperial friend, this here prototype blaster weapon is my company's proudest blaster invention and we call it the PP-001 Blaster or the Prototype Proton 1st edition Blaster."

"What can it do?" the agent questioned.

"Well I was getting there my friend. While your Empire has monstrous walkers that can destroy the biggest of cruisers and smaller walkers who also pack serious firepower, your infantry, from what I've heard, is lacking in that "Oomph" factor that your vehicles share. So I was thinking, why not make a blaster that can cause that scale of damage in a smaller package that your infantries can use."

"That certainly is interesting Mr. Moj. Something like this certainly could add the "Oomph" factor to our troopers. How many of these do you have made?" the agent questioned

"Well Mr…?"

"Riser Mack"

"Well Mr. Mack, if you look all around you, you'll see that these crates contain thousands of these beauties and they can be yours for a simple price of credits and of course, safe passage through the Mustafar system for your Empire."

Riser thought for awhile before he spoke up again, "Let me discuss with my contact to see what's his interest on your blasters."

"Go right ahead," the falleen answered back.

* * *

As Riser Mack went over to a corner of the hangar, away from the Ziton Moj, he contacted the Grand Admiral.

"Yes Head agent, what is the current situation on the Black sun's weaponry they wish to share with us?" questioned the blue chiss male.

"Well I feel you'd find the weaponry most promising, if you wish for me to divulge you in what Mr. Moj has told me about it," Riser said.

"You may divulge me Head agent," responded the grand admiral.

"Well in the words of the man himself, he said that he appreciates the way our walkers have that the so-called "oomph" factor to them and said that these Prototype Proton 1st edition blasters or PP-001 for short, will be able to provide the same "Oomph" factor to our infantry too."

The blue chiss thought about this for awhile before he grinned maliciously towards the human male in front of him, saying, "Tell Mr. Moj that I would be very much interested in seeing these blasters in combat personally and that I'll be in touch with him as soon as you leave."

He honestly felt slightly uncomfortable seeing the Grand Admiral smiling like that but replied with, "Will do Grand Admiral, Agent Riser Mack out," and with that, the hologram disappeared and it was just him and Ziton Moj.

* * *

As Riser Mack walked back to Ziton Moj, he said, "So what did your investor say about my beautiful blasters, hmm?"

"He said that he'll personally be in touch with you as soon as I leave and that he is rather interested in your proton blaster," replied the agent.

When he reached the slightly taller green falleen, he said, " it was nice doing business with you, we'll be in touch," as he shook hands with him.

"Oh, I feel this is a start to a great and prosperous friendship to us both, my friend," the green falleen replied back, sounding rather satisfied.

As the person that was said to be Riser Mack left, Ziton turned to his bodyguards and said, "Make sure this room is secured, I don't want anyone in or out of here until our buyer comes. Understood?"

The two remained silent before the bronze trandoshan broke the silence and responded back with, "Of Coursssse bosssss," and afterwards, the assassin droid responded with, "Of course, Isslarok's Master! I will kill any meatbags that enter here that do not belong!" with a disturbingly cheery voice to boot.

"Good, I am counting on both of you, Isslarok, Heat," as he proceeded to leave the hangar and the two took guard positions by the hangars' doors.

Luminara was seriously alarmed by the news that they just received and went to tell the clone commander that it was time to leave before she noticed that he was gone. She slightly panicked, looking left and right for the clone before she noticed him sneaking back over to her. She calmed down a bit before whispering, "Where were you!"

The clone looked at her and said, "We are going."

"I am hoping you have a plan with these blasters but I assume that you already do since we're leaving already, hmm?"

Foxtails chuckled quietly, "Oh don't worry Master Jedi, ten steps ahead of you."

She felt through the force as she felt several satchel charges placed around different points of the hundreds of crates surrounding them. She sighed and whispered back to the clone, albeit contently, "Let's get going then," as they snuck their way past the security and guards again and when they reached a safe distance, they made their way to where they left the Spectre. That is when Foxtails flipped open the detonator and pressed the flashing red button.

_Kaboom_.

**Hope this chapter didn't feel rushed in the sort. I know I didn't narrate the stealth bits but that's because I didn't think it was necessary to drag out this chapter as long as it is already and also with dialogue mostly being the main focus of this week's chapter. I hope this and the last chapters have broughten insight into Riser as a character and individual as I was intending to do. We also got some insight into some of my OC clone character: Foxtails! This story will have many new OCs with, of course, characters that you love from the canon stories! I noticed that with each new chapter, I find myself tiring out a lot. With that, I'd like to hear your guys responses to my story as of lately either through comments or PMs on what you like, what could be changed, and how I could get better. Honestly, writing now, I can seriously say that responses from you guys really do push me to write this story. As much as I love writing it, I always love to see positive responses or constructive criticism. Any negative comments will, of course, be removed immediately. **

**P.S: The second chapter of this week will unlikely be today and mostly likely Thursday, if the latest: Friday**

**Anyways, best regards**

**~Skully**


	10. Chapter 10

**A/N: Today we start a new arc! I call this arc: Disturbed voices, because it'll focus mostly around Hailey and the after effects of the Sith mask. Don't worry for this story doesn't revolve around Hailey and this arc is only two parts ( Chapter 10 and 11 ) but although this might be way longer than anything I've written so far. There will, of course, be other arcs that focus around a certain character or two so each OC gets their chance to shine. That being said: This arc will get rather disturbing and dark. If you're not comfortable with that, I'll have a summary of everything in the chapter. Anyways enjoy today's chapter!**

As Hailey left in Riser's Imperial Shuttle, she took time to reflect on everything that just happened.

"_Had Riser seriously just let her escape from the clutches of the Empire?" _She thought to herself.

She shook her head as she focused back to that vile masked that had scarred her deeply. She still vividly remember visions of her friend's skin being melted off and blaming everything on her. They all seemed to abhorrently hate Hailey in the vision and tried their best to kill her but would end up melting in gore and viscera before they could even remotely reach her. To say she would be scarred for a long time, would be an absolute understatement.

She composed herself and shut out the memories of those visions as the shuttle's autopilot guided her to the coordinates where she'd be out of range of Dathomirs' radars. As the shuttle glided through unknown space, she saw a familiar black freighter ship enter her peripheral vision and sighed with joy to see the friendly freighter.

She heard a voice came over the radio as a familiar squeaky pig-voice was heard, "Who is this?"

She wasn't sitting on the pilot's seat because of the autopilot and instead was seated on the shuttles' several transport seats and slowly made her way towards the radio and pressed the button to communicate back, "This… i..is… FR 2 to BP, I escaped…" albeit taking short, quick breaths between each word.

A squeal of joy came over the radio as the pig man said, "Boarding effective immediate, Welcome home Hailey!"

* * *

Hailey was now spread out on a bed in the medical bay area of the ship. She had bandages wrapped around her torso, legs and Ulysses was tending to the last deep gouge on her right thigh with the rest of the Freedom Ringers watching closely as the ugnaught finished up.

"And…. all done Hailey." said the ugnaught.

"Thank you Ulysses," replying whilst giving a weak smile.

"It's all good, you're family. Although one thing I want to know is how you even managed to sneak away from there," the pig man said quizzingly.

Hailey sighed deeply and knew the next words they were about to hear, well, it was going to be shocking.

"Riser Mack. That is how I escaped." mumbled the miraluka.

"Wait. You mean _the_ Riser Mack? The only one who has been giving us hell since 7 BBY?" questioned Tania.

The miraluka nodded her head in confirmation at what the red twi'lek had said and nevertheless, saying they were shock would be a gigantic understatement. The room was completely silent at this new revelation of information now and would be until Karus spoke up first.

"That actually makes sense…" he drifted off.

"Wait? What do you mean that 'makes sense' Karus?" said the red twi'lek jedi

"Well think about, last time we had heard from a couple days ago: Dathomir was on complete lockdown. No-one was allowed in or out, unless-"

"-unless you were a high ranking officer…" Ulysses finished.

Isslarok grumbled curse words to himself before another eerily bubbly voice spoke, "You have something to say Master!"

"Shut up, you old bucket of bolts," responded the Trandoshan.

"That is simply untrue Master!" recoiled the droid in shock, "I only was created 2 years, 4 months, 23 days, 12 minutes, 10 seconds, 4.54 milliseconds ago!"

"AGH!"

The trandoshan threw up his hands in defeat as he grumbled his way out of the med bay. They couldn't blame Issla for his outbursts because out of the entire crew: he probably had a deeper hatred than anyone for the blasted head agent. After awhile, they piled out of the room to let Hailey rest up and to get some sleep.

_XXX _

_Hailey woke up in a pitch bitch room that seemed to void on for neverending miles as she surveyed her surroundings. As she did this, she soon found herself looking at a disturbance in the void which was the outline of something or someone. She blinked and rubbed her eyes to squint them to get a better look but she didn't have to because right after she did this, a black robed individual was now right in front of her. _

_The sudden movement of the person caused her to jump back and try to grab her bo-rifle to defend herself but soon found herself to not have the electrical weapon with her on person._

_Suddenly, a disembodied voice speaks to her, the voice was familiar but much more deeper and almost sounded as if it was choking on something, "Do not make the same mistake I did."_

_Once it said this, crumbled stone pillars appear all around her on a reddish rocky ground. It takes ( more like forced ) her attention to the ruined stone pillars and finds them to have inscribings she is completely foreign to. Once done minorly inspecting the ruins, she finds that she is surrounded by not just one robed individual but a whole slew of individuals who have silvery objects in their hands and with the first robed individual still being in front of her. _

_They all drew their red lightsabers except the one, which was the one directly in front of her. _

_The disembodied voice, well more like voices now, spoke and they all said, "Don't make the same mistake we did," as they all rushed her with sabers in hand and before they could stab her, she woke up. _

XXX

Hailey woke up screaming at the top of her lungs.

Feet rushed down the halls of the black pearl as Tania, Karus, and Ulysses walked into the medical bay of the Black Pearl to see what was wrong.

"Haileys! What is going on?!" Tania said worriedly.

The miraluka woman just sat up from the med bed visibly shaking furiously as she clutched her sides with her arms. Karus was soon by her side as he pulled her into a tight embrace, resting his left hand on her back and right hand on the back of her head.

"Hailey, tell me, I sensed something else happened on Dathomir, didn't it," he said as he pulled away to see her face. The miraluka nodded her slowly head in confirmation.

"Can I see?" Karus said.

The miraluka woman hesitated for a second before she reluctantly shook her head "yes."

Karus put his hand on Hailey's forehead for a few seconds and what he would see would horrify him for life.

XXX

_Her torture went on for hours with her being electrocuted multiple times alongside with several new lacerations across her body which ranged from deep to grazes across her pearly white skin. Most expected for Thrawn to start getting irritated by the lack of results but he knew the blue chiss. He stood there, expressionless, as the male Dathomiran inquisitor known as Brother 1 continued the torture on her. He wasn't baffled at all by the Grand Admiral's reaction or less of. Sometimes he wondered if the Grand Admiral had emotions at all but knew that was a stupid question to think of. Couple more minutes passed before Thrawn sighed and said, "Bring out the Mask." _

_Wait mask? What mask was Thrawn talking about? Could he be talking about the Mask he think it is? As if his answers were being answered, the Inquisitor came back seconds later with a grey hood that had two eye holes that allowed the wearer to see out through the holes. The grey-skinned inquisitor walked up to Hailey and forcibly put the mask, well more like hood, over her face until it was tightly secured onto her head. Once it was tightly secured, Hailey screamed. _

XXX

"A force-damn sith mask," he mumbled.

"What Karus? What did you see?" said Tania.

"They used a damn-" hitting his fist into the wall next to him, "-Sith mask on her!" he snarled.

Woah.

That was probably the first time Tania, if not everyone, had seen Karus lose his cool so easily but I guess spending 1 year prior with Hailey making the Freedom Ringers can do that to someone: She was like a daughter to him.

"Woah woah there *snort* Karus!" the ugnaught ran to his side, placing his hand on Karus's hip.

The older jedi saw the concern in his friends and took a deep breath and apologized.

"I am… sorry everyone, It's just- Tania you know about sith masks…." mumbled Karus.

To be frank, Tania was just as pissed as the older human male was and she wanted to scream, shout, and murder that Grand Admiral right then and now but she just as she was getting mad, she remembered her Luminara's words: "_Tania, just remember while your under duress, your friends lives are on the line and one wrong move could cost me, you or your friend's lives." _

Tania took a shaky deep breath before patting Karus on the back and turning her head towards Hailey, "you had a nightmare, didn't you?"

The miraluka looked at her puzzlingly to ask her how she knew and the red twi'lek would say how just, next, "Hailey, I've known you for how long now? We practically sisters, I know when you had a bad dream."

The miraluka thought for awhile before saying, "Tania and Karus only."

Ulysses looked at the two jedi before nodding his head and heading back to the cockpit of the Pearl.

* * *

"So Hails, what happened. Maybe me and Karus can give you some insight into it." softly Tania spoke.

"I was in a room and it was black, blacker than night and… and… I saw a person wearing a black robe in front of me…" miraluka woman mumbled softly.

"Did you get a look of their face?" asked the older jedi.

The miraluka shook her head and proceeded to say, "No, but their...aura felt…,"

struggling to find the right word before saying, "familiar."

"That wasn't the weirdest part of it. She said that, "I shouldn't make the same mistake they did," she said softly and turned her head towards Karus, "What does that even mean?"

The two jedi's thought for awhile before the three would get a surprising answer.

"I think Hailey, Karus, that something big is about to happen in the future, maybe not the immediate future but still will happen. I think it might be your, as crazy as it sounds, future self was warning you to think about your decisions seriously from here on out."

Karus and Hailey turned towards Tania as she had her hand rested on her chin as if to indicated she was in deep thought. They were completely caught off guard by the Twi'lek's response. Silence drew on longer before Karus finally said, "I- I have to agree with Tania on that. As crazy as it sounds, it might've seemed that your future self could of been trying to warn you but remember Tania: sometimes these, Visions, could just be bad dreams or machinations of the mind."

"Well of course they could be Master but I am just telling Hailey that if it is true, she should be more careful of what she does if this vision or dream turn out to be true."

As they sat in the room, a familiar Trandoshan walked into the room and said, "Tania, Karu, Hailey. We have a message from Fulcrum on our next mission."

As the group left the med bay, Hailey thought back on the vision she had and when she did, for some reason, she felt it would involve someone that no one would expect.

**So this chapter wasn't as long as I anticipated but I feel like it was still a good length to it. I still hope you enjoyed today's chapter arc. The last part will be posted next week and then we'll be diving into a huge 4-5 part arc series and will include your favorites and will maybe introduce some information on what happened to certain characters. Anyways, Have a great rest of your week. **

**Best Regards**

**~Skully**


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